Sum Over Histories
by MVariorum
Summary: Olivia comes back. Olivia and Peter save the world. Again.
1. Chapter 1

**Sum over Histories**

by MVariorum

**Summary**: Olivia comes back. Olivia and Peter save the world. Again.  
><strong>Categories<strong>: Romance; Adventure  
><strong>Pairings<strong>: Peter/Olivia  
><strong>Rating<strong>: M: So kiddies, the faint of heart, and those with refined taste should scoot along elsewhere. You have been warned.  
><strong>Story Notes<strong>: Please accept my preemptive apologies for the pseudo-pseudoscience. Not a scientist. Sadly, I'm not even a pseudoscientist. Never will be.  
><strong>Disclaimer<strong>: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.  
><strong>Completed<strong>: No  
><strong>Spoilers<strong>: AU after early season 3 (more or less around _Do Shapeshifters Dream of Electric Sheep?). _Includes some elements of the early part of Season 3, but no spoilers beyond that.

A/N: Many thanks to starg8fans for the generous encouragement and beta.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 1<strong>

Dim light surrounded me and soft tones called my name, "Olivia?"

"O-LIV-ia?"

This last was softer, emphasizing the "LIV" in the exasperated way people talk to ill-behaved children.

Thick-headed, I fought for consciousness—and barely won. Astrid's face leaned over me to block out the uncomfortable beam of light in my eyes.

I panted, straining my wrists when the restraints pulled at my hands. A tie from a ratty bathrobe ran under the gurney securing my hands. Something I couldn't see through the bright light tugged on my ankles. Someone had invented makeshift restraints on the fly.

Astrid's face was rumpled with worry and she reached over to adjust the medications that dripped from the nearby IV. I might have moaned. My voice was hoarse and my throat burned.

Still struggling, I focused again on Astrid's face. Without the black beret and a thousand variables reflecting in her irises, her eyes were soft and brown, though deep shadows punctuated them underneath. I could saw sadness layered over compassion in her dark eyes. She was dressed in jeans and a soft sweater. Her hand was warm; it felt tiny as it stroked my wrist and then disappeared into mine.

Her smile stretched a little too widely across her face as she felt my struggles cease. "You're back." She grinned. "We thought we'd lost you there for a second."

The Secretary's clinical voice emerged from somewhere behind the light above my head—he was muttering to himself. Astrid's free hand fluttered in the direction of the foot of the gurney I was strapped to.

Strapped to?

I must have failed.

Shit.

When my eyes followed the movement of her hand, Peter stood up, scraping the metal fold-up chair across the concrete floor. He shoved his hands in the pockets of the pea coat.

I was beginning to think his wardrobe department was on strike; he never wore anything else but navy wool. His face, artificially composed, was as blank as a Bhikkhu. The lack of his irritating smirk terrified me far more than my failure and certain death.

The first syllable of what was supposed to be a whole word crossed his lips as he moved to put his hands on my ankles again. That alone was strange: the revenant-Peter who only I could see, was never at a loss for words. He had so many words in fact I had once actually tried to stuff a rag in his mouth. The rag had slipped through his phantom form leaving me more than convinced than ever I was insane.

But that was before I remembered who I was. Before I remembered I was miserable and trapped on the Other Side. Then, when his soothing presence only frightened me, I would have done anything to shut him the hell up.

When I flinched away from him, he bit back the word and snapped away from me, jamming his hand further into his pockets.

After struggling one last time—more for form's sake than any real conviction I could escape—I closed my eyes again. When I failed to cross over back home I had revealed to the Secretary and the powers that be I knew who I was. Just as what little consciousness I briefly possessed passed away in the clutch of drugs that flooded my bloodstream, I narrowed my eyes in what I hoped was Peter's direction and managed to rasp, "What now, genius?"

* * *

><p>I wasn't entirely certain what Olivia meant, but I knew what she meant by "genius." Or, rather who. Her voice was barely functional and her absynthine eyes pinned me to the lab's dark wall like an insect in a case. I know she was less than coherent, not even post Bra-and-Panties-Tank™ strange, but her eyes were clear. She was pissed—specifically at me.<p>

After Olivia succumbed (again) to Walter's sleep elixir, Walter himself started mumbling, walking from table to table inside the lab. He might have been dancing—or he might have been calculating where the hell she had been and how she had been returned—with Walter it was impossible to tell. Astrid, who had heard Olivia's words and seen her flinch away from me, tried unsuccessfully to make like a tree.

I shrugged off my coat and busied myself with loosening Olivia's restraints. I was pretty sure that she wouldn't fight us again when she woke, but not sure enough to free her entirely. Don't ask me how I know. For the first time in a long while I could feel the butterfly wings of her consciousness brushing up against my intentionally empty brain. Since I could feel her again, I presumed she was back—whatever that might mean.

It was, finally, the lack of her mental invasion which had done the Faux Olivia in. When I finally took a few moments to pull my empty head out of my ass (or, more precisely, off of the Faux's buttery skin) to ponder that, after months of feeling her politely rippling outside my own consciousness, suddenly, when I should have felt her the most, she was _out_ of my head.

I had also somehow, managed to ignore pastry deliveries to Walter, her open-mouthed-throw-her-head-back laughter, and her shy-yet-persistent interest in every aspect of my life. That her eyes were flat and emerald as a poker table through all of this bounced right off my shields.

Don't ask me why it took me nearly five long weeks. I really don't have an answer for that one.

"Should we . . . I mean, just let her up like that?" Astrid's voice was uncertain and she wouldn't look me in the eye. She'd rightly guessed I was acting on gut instinct, hardly reassuring given that my gut was more or less unreliable in detecting interdimensional combatants among us.

There wasn't really an answer to Astrid's non-question. I hardly knew myself how this thing worked. I knew Olivia was in my head. Well, back in my head.

Olivia's telepathy—courtesy of childhood experiments in Cortexiphan—is as one-dimensional as a radio with a broken dial always tuned to W-PETER. For reasons Walter never bothered to explain (or, maybe, chose not to explain) not only could Olivia hear me, but I was also minimally capable of hearing her. Unfortunately, my abilities only let me intuit inconsequential things—like whether Olivia was going to order spaghetti or egg salad at a restaurant—more of a sideshow trick than a real facility.

The day I realized Olivia was quite literally in my head I threw a temper tantrum the likes of which made both world's three year-olds give up in defeat. In the ensuing months, though I bitched about her telepathic abilities long and loud to anyone who would listen, I secretly grew, if not comfortable exactly, at least not resentful of having her flickering in my head like a late-summer firefly. When she was distracted, or blocked me, or went into Walter's Terror Tank I grew as peevish and petulant as a child deprived of a sweet.

I wasn't sure what to say to Astrid, so I settled for the truth.

"I don't think she knew where she was. I think she thought she was still over there. Probably tested like a lab rat and penned up by Walternate." I yanked on the restraints but they wouldn't give. Damnit. Panic had made me pull them too tight. I'd have to cut them off.

This morning had marked five weeks since our return from the Other Side, when I guess they pulled the Olivia switcheroo. It had only been a few hours since I finally realized that the Olivia constantly tuned into my own head was just gone.

The Faux and I were dozing after a particularly sweaty Sunday spent entirely in her bed. It had been several hours that my brain had experienced regular blood-flow—this hadn't happened since I was invited oh so sweetly into her home and her bed (and honestly, this should have been my first tip-off). I uncharacteristically let myself fold outward toward her, expecting to feel the familiar bloom of her mind in and around my own. When I felt nothing—just her utter and complete absence—I knew she was gone. And then, like the psychopathic twins from the first season of the _X-Files_, I just _knew_.

There was no other explanation, unless the Cortexiphan suddenly just stopped working (assuming it _was_ the Cortexiphan, a minor detail Walter had yet to prove). If the Cortexiphan had stopped working, I reasoned, she was sure as hell likely to mention it given the drama of our lives.

Call it guilt, call it fear, call it the congealed hot-wings the Faux and I consumed in the buff straight from their Styrofoam delivery boxes that afternoon, but when I realized my Olivia was gone and I was enjoying post-coital lethargy with a soldier from my home world, a double agent, and possibly a shape-shifter, I raced to bathroom with the urgency of a bulimic.

I had just enough time to turn on the sink water to drown out the noise before I was ingloriously sick in the toilet. Over the running water I heard her muffled voice checking on me. The wings burned more the second time, but I managed to assure her, through the door, I was just taking a shower.

Then, I brushed my teeth and dressed. When I emerged from the shower I had a plan.

After a most degrading struggle during which I earned a bloody lip, a scalp lac, and a tolerable concussion from the Faux, I arrived at the basement lab with her trussed and gagged. Walter ignored me when we entered. He was already wearing his lab coat and mixing something cloudy and bubbly in a beaker. For once, his eccentricity comforted rather than irritated me.

I explained what I thought happened the best I could while Astrid chained the Faux to a thick sewage pipe that ran alongside the lab's far wall.

Just when Astrid had convinced me not to just shoot the Faux and be done with it, a roar loud enough to make my ears ring removed a hefty section of the lab's left wall and ceiling. A student desk from the upper floor classroom, the kind with the table attached to the chair, wobbled, then pitched down into the basement gloom. Through the gaping hole and the dust I could see the antiquated chalkboard with a few lines of a Keats Ode scratched on it. "Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss, / Though winning near the goal - yet, do not grieve; / She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, / Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!" I thought about the people on the other side, frozen in amber, plugging the thinning margins between the two universes.

Then, a tornado of white light spiraled down and hovered in the middle of the room. Objects sailed hither and yon through the air. A plastic bucket thumped against Gene's flank and she added continuous mooing to the din. I pulled Olivia's Glock out of my waistband, worth every penny the injuries it cost me, and pointed it at the Faux. I reasoned she was somehow responsible for this newest, yet all-too-common, suspension of the laws of physics.

"What the —" was all I could manage before the tornado shaped light added rippling to its repertoire of effects.

Everything around me was unfolding under the red haze of my anger against the Faux, against Walter, against my other seven year-old self, whose death unwittingly inaugurated this dark odyssey. Walter and Astrid were yelling at me, but the hum of my own guilt and the roar of the preternatural cyclone made them look like a dubbed king fu movie. Even my debilitated senses recognized that nothing good could come of this.

My brain loped moronically trying to keep up with the events unfolding before me. I should run. I should take cover. But all I could think about was how Gene might begin swirling into the cyclone of light like cows inevitably do in movie-tornados. I wondered whether the other side had direct-sourced chocolate milk.

A moment later, like the rushed fourth act in a television script, the Faux, still chained and gagged was magically sucked into the rippling light just when my trigger finger was less than an ounce of pressure away from transforming her face into an unrecognizable splatter of gore.

A nanosecond after her simulacrum had roared with fright and vanished, Olivia rippled in front of us like a hologram then landed with a corporeally wet plop on the lab's concrete floor. She was wearing a white hospital gown and gobs of unnamable goo.

I hoped to god she was the one from this universe.

I could hear Olivia's gasps and choking from behind the ropes of her hair. The Faux's restraints clanked emptily against the sewage pipe Astrid had chained her to.

Astrid and Walter, both quicker (not to mention more capable of rational thought) rushed to her. Astrid, more useful than Walter, began sponging goo off of her face. Walter plucked at the edges of her gown and murmured _sotto voce_.

The red in my vision cleared and the buzzing in my ears dulled before I realized that I had a gun pointed at all three of them. I lowered the weapon with trembling hands, placed it on the lab table and backed away.

Maybe this was why Olivia wouldn't let me legally register a firearm.

I kept backing away until I was next to Gene's stall, where I kneeled down and committed myself to sucking great gulps of air. The smell of manure and curdled milk irrigated my sinuses. Gene watched serenely as I emptied the too-scant contents of my stomach for the second time that day.

Moments after she was returned Olivia behaved in a way that made Tyler Durden seem passive as pie crust. Everything that wasn't fastened down she hurled in our direction. She screamed obscenities until she was hoarse.

Recalling the grainy video headlining a little girl crouched in a fetal position surrounded by a blackened room, I mentally checked the area for exits and fire extinguishers.

Then, when all movable objects were out of her reach and her voice was gone, she used her own teeth and nails to shred her gown. It took Astrid-like patience, elephantine doses of Walter's sedative homebrew, and a set of makeshift restraints before we managed to first strap and then calm Olivia down, in that order.

Over the past several hours Astrid had cleaned the now-sedated Olivia of most the slop she had accrued universe-hopping and, while Walter and I decorously turned our backs, changed her in to one of my spare T-shirts I fetched from the back of Walter's car where they seemed to magically reproduce themselves. Walter monitored her vitals, and I managed not to vomit again.

When Olivia sat up, her (my) T-shirt hung off one of her shoulders, making her look like some strange refugee from _Flashdance_. I watched the wheels of her mind turn and felt her process that she had somehow managed to return home.

When she spoke her voice still scratched, but you wouldn't imagine that a very few hours earlier she'd practically tried to gnaw off her own arm.

The tractor beam of her eyes focused on Walter. "Took you long enough."

Well, at least then I knew she was the one who belonged here.

* * *

><p>Everyone in the room froze and gaped at me. I wondered if there was a mistake and I was transported to Madame Tussaud's instead of Walter's basement lab.<p>

Maybe they were expecting me to find and use a weapon, given my confused fits from earlier.

Astrid was the first to move toward me—not surprising, since she is by far the bravest and most pragmatic of our band of Merry Men (Family? Motley Crew?). Whatever. She looked me in the eye and then silently handed me towels, one after another for me to scuff away at the now-dried goo.

"Have you been – there?" Walter was the first to speak. It wasn't really a question. I nodded and felt knotted mats of hair graze my upper back and shoulders.

"I guess Olivia would like to clean up and get some sleep before she answers many more questions," Astrid said firmly. "She can come back to my house, shower and sleep. In the morning we can—"

I sucked in air to ward off the pain. It was excruciating. My body felt like it was passing though a vice.

"I want to go home." Suddenly I did, even if I couldn't clearly recall the location or layout of my apartment. I could only picture the other Olivia's house on the other side.

Walter protested that I needed observation, but his heart wasn't in it—even though he was mumbling and shuffling when he spoke all I could see was the Secretary in his tailored suit. I couldn't quite repress a shudder.

After she nudged me into the office and closed the door Astrid helped me into the spare clothes I kept in a duffle at the lab. She gathered up the legs of my sweatpants in her hands and motioned for me to put my foot in the hole, "You should stay with me tonight. Shannon is out of town."

_Astrid is an FBI agent. She helps with Walter in the lab. Shannon is her_ _girlfriend._ Like a latecomer frantically reading a playbill before the curtain rises on the first act, I had to consciously recall and memorize these characters' identities.

Even though she was infantilizing me, Astrid's quiet kindness helped me to focus.

"I have a soaking tub. And a new bottle of Irish whiskey." She shoveled my arms through the holes of a sweatshirt. "That one with a dirty name—Black Bush."

I let her dress me like a doll and stared blankly over the top of Astrid's head, now bent to tighten the strings of the sweatpants' waist.

"It's Shannon's but we can crack that open."

She kicked the T-shirt I dropped to the floor into the corner.

"Thanks, but I really want to sleep in my own bed tonight." Astrid's lips pulled tight against her teeth, imitating a smile.

"Okay," she said, but her eyes narrowed with pity. "Walter's boots are by the door. You can wear those."

I wandered out the door of the office and slid my feet into the boots by the stairs, waiting for my ride.

* * *

><p>Olivia had spent too long in that room with Astrid. I was uptight just having her out of my sight. My brain hadn't really yet caught up with the events of the evening, but even though I could feel her here again, it wasn't enough. I wanted her out here. Where I could see her.<p>

"Son, why don't you go get the car warmed up? I am sure Agent Dunham would like to warm her ass." Walter's voice was consoling, sympathetic even.

For once, I was too tired to deliver a suitable smart-ass comment. I just shrugged my shoulders silently and took off out of the lab. Walking out the lab door, I passed the darkened hallway to the right with the custodial closet squatting at the end of it like a misplaced punctuation mark.

The hallway was dark, just as it had been almost a year ago, the day Olivia drank Walter's worm-smoothie and got her memories back.

Astrid had taken Walter home for the day while I stayed later to finish up a test on the shapeshifter device. When I stepped out of the lab, Olivia was there, looking more rumpled than usual. Only later did I learn that the shapeshifter wearing Charlie's body had slung her around an alley, compelling her to put a bullet in his head.

I had only seen Olivia briefly that day, just long enough for me to Vincent Vega her with the epinephrine when the onslaught of her memories made her hit the floor harder and faster than if she'd snorted heroine. When she'd popped up like a macabre Jack-in-the-Box after the injection, I issued a brief, but heartfelt, prayer of thanks to the gods that I hadn't lacerated her coronary artery. Then I watched in paralyzed horror as Olivia levered herself up drunkenly, pulled on her jacket and stalked out the door, already dialing her phone and yammering about talking to Nina Sharp.

In any case, that evening I don't know if she had just come into the building or she had been waiting there, stalking me. She grabbed my shirtsleeves and wordlessly tugged me down the hallway while I loped behind to keep up. I'll never know how she even knew the closet was there, much less unlocked. We'd been coming to Walter's lab for over a year and I'd never even _looked_ down there before.

At the end of the hallway, she'd opened the door and pushed me inside with such single-mindedness that for a moment I thought she might be a shapeshifter. The door closed behind us with a snick and she backed me up against the "V" of two walls in a corner of the small closet.

I smelled ancient dust and the stiff, moldy cleaning tools that were piled in one corner. The molten mercury of her eyes stayed the smart-ass remark hovering on the tip of my tongue. In one efficient motion she grabbed the two sides of my collar, yanked my head down the few inches to hers and ground her lips into mine.

Her mouth opened and her tongue slid between my teeth. Before I even had time to react she lifted my hands to the heat of her breasts between the flaps of her already unbuttoned shirt. Her bra was the sensible sling of black cotton jersey. Senses on autopilot, my hands palmed her breasts while my mouth tried to taste all of her at once.

When my thumbs grazed her nipples, Olivia's sharp intake of breath was nearly inaudible, but considering I've seen her take a beating with barely a gasp, she may as well have screamed. It propelled my dimwitted brain cells into action. I didn't need an engraved invitation—I'm not exactly known for my self-control. I began to grope her in earnest. I felt one of the buttons pop off my shirt as her cool hands traced matching trails up my sides and onto my chest.

It must have been an old custodial closet, because the corner she shoved me into was a couple of inches shorter that where Olivia was standing—probably a drain for dirty mop water. Our slight height differential rectified, my cock bobbed and probed the heat between her legs. She drew in air again and snaked one leg around my hip. I heard the clunk of her leather shoe against the washtub. When her hot mouth slid down my throat, leaving a deliciously frigid trail behind it that raised goose bumps on my skin, I moaned.

Her breath hitched and I mourned the loss of her sharp, purposeful hands behind my neck and groping my ass. I heard the hiss of a zipper, a bump and a curse, and then she was squirming under my arm onto the edge of the washtub, angling me around to face her with a hand on my neck. Her eyes were magnified chloroplasts, limitless shades of green, while her deliberate hands undid the button and zipper on my jeans and shoved my shorts and jeans down in one swipe. One hand enveloped my cock and the other cupped my balls.

Self-control stretched thin and then snapped like a worn rubber band.

I never thought she would make the first move. And I specifically never thought she would make it in a dirty broom closet in the Harvard basement.

My trembling hands couldn't stop touching her even if my life had depended on it. I couldn't shake the feeling that this would be a one shot-deal. That I would lapse into old age and senility and never taste her again.

I decided I would get a damned good taste.

I wanted to ask her a thousand questions, beginning with "What are you doing?" and ending with . . . well, "What are you _doing_?" I realized that even thinking such questions meant I'd have to surrender my man-card but I didn't care. I wanted to ask anyway, but "Uh—mmm! —via!" were the only syllables I could manage.

Then she smiled at me, a wicked, wanton smile I could barely see in the dim light coming underneath the door, a smile I was sure I would dream about on my deathbed. Then, she guided my cock into the tight, wet heat of her and there was no more thought. The universes narrowed to the size of Olivia, the push of her narrow fingers on my hipbones, the jagged breaths she pulled against my ear, and the coffee and walnut taste of her.

I wouldn't have regretted the loss of a thousand universes then.

I don't know what came over me, but I was able to keep up my uneven thrusts forever. Had I been lucid enough for reason I would have given myself a mental high-five. The air in the closet was warm and humid and Olivia came twice before I finally shuddered, groaned and spilled into her.

Her arms were trapped under mine and curled up around my shoulders. She exhaled and gave my shoulders a squeeze that I took to mean, "let up on your desperate hold of me." When I numbly let her go, she slithered off the edge of the tub to reach her clothes while I struggled to form intelligent thought.

I took a step back, and only when I felt my bare ass on the cold wall behind me did I register that she was nearly fully dressed. While I shoveled myself back into my clothes, Olivia shrugged into her suit coat neatly hanging on the door's handle and pushed her hair over her shoulder.

She grabbed the door's handle and paused. She stared at the door handle like it could divulge all the mysteries of the universe and said, "If you're not busy, you can come by tonight. Rachel and Ella found a place last week."

Then she opened the door and walked out like she'd just been in the closet looking for an extra roll of toilet paper for the Ladies' Room.

Do I even need to mention I wasn't busy?

The general outline of our relationship was drawn that afternoon. I waited patiently and then, when she got bored, or decided she needed a real live person to scratch her itch, I'd get a minor variation of that quiet, businesslike invite.

Then I was allowed to show up on her doorstep, strip her naked and touch every part of her with my hands and mouth. I was allowed to moan assorted abbreviations of her name when she moved over me, eyes locked with mine, while her hair fanned around my shoulders and curtained us from the outside world.

All of this was only allowed isolated in her apartment. Everything else about our lives went on as before. Not even the tiniest hint that there was something more between us was allowed by daylight. I don't know this because we discussed it. Please. I know because the morning after our first night spent playing hide the gun in Olivia's apartment I couldn't suppress the wide smile I gave her when she came in the lab. Couldn't stop myself from beginning to cross the room toward her to touch or even kiss her.

I had taken probably about three steps before Olivia's Arctic-frosted eyes rooted me to the floor.

By day I worked the lab with Walter and Astrid, testing the invariably gelatinous evidence in order to catch the latest freak de jour, spoke Walter to Olivia, and occasionally trotted beside her when she conducted her investigations.

It wasn't the healthiest relationship, it's true. But I'm ashamed to say I was willing to take what I could get. Saying Olivia has trust issues is like saying the IRA has sovereignty issues; true, yet still painfully inadequate.

But then, after we came back from the Other Side, Olivia promptly morphed into boilerplate girlfriend. The Faux and I enjoyed romantic dinners, breakfasts in bed, and sexy looks across the prone corpses in the lab.

During that period I couldn't unstick the ridiculous refrain from my head: Y_ou just hit the jackpot._ Now it seemed just as unintentionally farcical as when MJ said it.

I briefly believed that maybe my absence, not to mention the real threat I posed if I stayed Over There with Walternate made Olivia realize just how much she needed me. That maybe what I had to offer her was something more than what my battery-operated equivalent could bring to the table.

Now that seemed as preposterous as one of Walter's more drug-addled theories.

It wasn't the first time in my life I'd deluded myself, but it may have been the most comprehensive.

And the most damaging.

* * *

><p>In the end, Peter drove me home. I briefly wondered why no one challenged his authority in this matter. Everyone else in the lab had scurried away like twigs blown by a gathering storm.<p>

Peter held the door silently for me to walk through.

When I stopped outside the building and froze, unable to find the direction of the car, Peter just passed me by and led the way. A black SUV chirped and blinked its lights. Peter opened the passenger door and I slid into the seat.

The streets of Boston whirled past, silent behind the closed window. It all felt so unreal. Like an iPod set to "shuffle," my brain spun, trying to read both sets of memories.

Was it possible to live with two lives coexisting unnaturally scrambled? Walter had said no, back when he let me plow into John's dying brain. Walter had claimed that to preserve my sanity John needed to be evicted from my head faster than a meth cook living next door to a daycare.

Walter had assumed, of course, I still had sanity to preserve.

Pretty much all aspects of each life felt unreal, now silent and spectral like the pre-dawn streets sealed off by the SUV's window. When I tried to separate them—even the inconsequential details like distinguishing the Secretary, who guest-starred in most of my nightmares, from Walter, for whom I had entertained some occasional affection— I only earned myself a headache.

It was a damned good thing Peter drove, since I had no idea how to _get_ home. When he pulled up in front of my stone Victorian, I was still confused, expecting to see the high-rise my doppelganger lived in. I stared at the building, turning my back on Peter, but I could feel him trying to disappear next to me on the seat, quivering just outside the door of my mind marked "CLOSED." I imagined Frank inside the building-that-wasn't-there, warming the dinner he'd cooked for me, tidying the massage oils for my foot rub.

All told, my twin had it pretty good: a reputable job, a handsome apartment, a loving family and, best I could tell, the perfect boyfriend.

She'd medaled in the Olympics for Christ's sake.

I on the other hand, spent my eighty hour weeks working on above-classified assignments which would have horrified and disgusted Dr. Moreau. I lived in a dumpy converted-Victorian. Alone. Most evenings, it was an effort to drink my Bushmills from a glass, and frankly, I usually didn't remember to try.

But the memory of that life—my life—was now shrouded in fog, like a dream I could barely remember the contours of when I woke up.

No wonder I wanted to forget. Her life was full, rich, _fun_. She was fun.

I was about as fun as a sucking chest wound. I didn't have sassy bangs (at least not voluntarily) and I've never, ever owned a leather jacket. No wonder Peter found it easy to fuck her.

Oh please. You think I don't know why he couldn't spare me a glance or string two words together? I sure didn't have to read him to see it. It was in the way he moved, the way he carefully avoided touching me. I had seen it both times I woke up after Mr. Toad's Interdimensional Ride, even if Walter's drugs made me too preoccupied to comprehend it until now.

And honestly, if Peter's sleeping with my doppleganger were the worst of my problems right now, I'd be ahead of the game.

"Well, thanks for the ride." Almost the minute the car stopped I had my hand on the door handle, trying to slide out.

Unfortunately, the pain in every cranny of my body slowed me down considerably. Lightning bolts of pain shot down from my shoulders to my arms and from my knees to my ankles. Christ, even my hair hurt. Peter was out of his door and around to my side before I could even slide out of the seat.

"Slow down—you're in pain." Peter stared at the area just to the left of my right ear. "You can't go anywhere without me anyway. Do you even have a key?"

As dismissals go it was pretty lame, I realized. I hadn't really expected to get rid of him that easily, like promising to call a bad blind-date.

Did I have a key? For some reason that struck me morbidly funny. No, Peter, I hadn't found time to pocket my key when I left the other Olivia's house this morning. I'd been somewhat distracted by Walternate's mercenaries who escorted me on my all-expenses-paid trip to the secret prison on Liberty Island.

Peter walked up the stairs in front of me. Through the hallway windows I could just see rays of predawn light snaking alongside the buildings behind my apartment. The half-light made the light sprinkle of snowflakes on Peter's wool pea coat shimmer, like he'd spent the night with strippers instead of strapping his psychotic partner to a metal slab.

I wanted to smash the drops destructively into the wool. I wondered if my hands would go right through him like they had Over There.

Shit.

I swallowed. Over There, Phantom-Peter plagued me like the force of pure id. His presence irrational, his words bending reason and time.

Over Here, he was righteous super-ego. A conscience more irritating because it was earnest and forthright. And because it kept me from sailing over the edge into the deep end of utter recklessness.

Really, I preferred the id.

Peter fished in his pockets, found the key and opened my apartment door. I noticed that my spare key was on his key ring. He pushed the door open and gestured for me to walk through.

"Oh, my God!" My apartment looked like the beaches of Gallipoli—but bloodier. Blood pooled in the corner by my bedroom and blood was smeared on the walls. A body-sized drag mark smeared blood from near the upended couch to the doorjamb. A chair had been shredded and the wall was pockmarked with—

"Bullet holes?" I said, gesturing toward the hallway wall.

Peter shifted next to me and absently put his hand to his head. Just below his hairline I saw what looked like crusted blood.

"What happened to you?"

Peter ignored my admittedly foolish question and began rubbing his chin with the back of his hand.

I took two strides, and reached for him. I ignored his visible flinch, filing the hurt away to examine later when I could separate it from all the other hurts roiling around in me like snakes in a handler's barrel. I put my hands on his hair and pulled his head down so I could see the top of it. I ran my hands on top of his head between his ears until I found the soggy wound still oozing fluids. It was medium-large sized. He probably needed stitches, not that he would get them. Real men don't get stitches.

"Let me guess. You ran into a wall?"

"Something like that." His voice was rough and muffled by my arm, like he hadn't used his voice in hours. I could feel what might have been a smile pressing into my coat sleeve.

"Uh. Could I stand up now?"

I let my hands drop and backed away. I wondered what my bedroom looked like. I was so very, very tired that, unless it already harbored a dead body, I was sleeping in my bed tonight.

Peter stepped into the apartment and closed the door behind him. He shucked his coat off and let it drop to the floor. To be fair, there was no other place to put it.

"Did you confront her here?" I didn't want to know the details, honestly, I didn't, but somehow it was out of my mouth before I fully realized that my mouth was moving.

He walked over to the miniature window in the corner of my "living area" and shoved his hands in his pockets. "Yeah, but only today. Or yesterday, I guess."

"I just found out today," he repeated, like I'd missed it the first time. "We didn't know. Until yesterday—late." He righted my upended coffee-table.

I ignored the deliberate evasiveness of his statement. "So you figured it out and then, what, I just appeared?"

"Something like that. We had just found out. I was explaining to Walter and Astrid that you—"

Peter's voice was as flat and dry as the Kansas prairie in August. He began picking up what looked like the fill from my armchair, which had somehow remained upright but had vomited stuffing all over the room.

"—that she wasn't you. I took her to the lab to Walter. Then she disappeared. And then you appeared."

Lovely. Between them all, a genius, a code-talker, and a mad scientist, they still hadn't been able to tell that I wasn't me. My own uniqueness overwhelmed me.

"I figured as much." Honestly, judging by the number of times Walter repeated the word _fortuitous_ at the lab, I was pretty certain before we even left that he didn't have a clue why I was home. Their stunned looks and lowered eyes had pretty much confirmed that no one here had been instrumental in helping me home.

Which, since I wasn't dead, means I was probably a good deal more capable than anyone thought. I decided to keep that information to myself for a while.

Peter walked away from the window, grabbed the edge of the couch and nodded at me. I hunched down by the other edge and together we flipped it back to an upright position. He flopped down on the couch and stared at the bullet holes in the opposite wall.

"I don't want to—" He leaned over and picked up shards of glass scattered all over the floor. It looked like it might have been a wine glass a few hours ago. "I'm not leaving tonight. Don't make me." He muttered the last part grudgingly, like it was me who owed him a favor.

I didn't correct him. Dawn already broke, so technically it was no longer night. I was too tired to argue.

I went into my room. Miraculously, it seemed mostly unscathed.

The bed was unmade and I collapsed on it still wearing my clothes. Peter-smell saturated the room.

Maybe it was Walter's drugs, maybe it was Peter's shedded skin cells adhered to every surface of my apartment, or maybe it was the deluge of anger and confusion rolling in wave after wave from Peter in the living room because I was too tired to block him, but my stomach lurched like someone kicked me.

Sheer exhaustion overtook me. And then I didn't think anymore.


	2. Chapter 2

**Sum over Histories**

by MVariorum

**Summary**: Olivia comes back. Olivia and Peter save the world. Again.  
><strong>Categories<strong>: Romance; Adventure  
><strong>Pairings<strong>: Peter/Olivia  
><strong>Rating<strong>: M: So kiddies, the faint of heart, and those with refined taste should scoot along elsewhere. You have been warned.  
><strong>Story Notes<strong>: Please accept my preemptive apologies for the pseudo-pseudoscience. Not a scientist. Sadly, I'm not even a pseudoscientist. Never will be.  
><strong>Disclaimer<strong>: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.  
><strong>Completed<strong>: No  
><strong>Spoilers<strong>: AU after early season 3 (more or less around _Do Shapeshifters Dream of Electric Sheep?). _Includes some elements of the early part of Season 3, but no spoilers beyond that.

A/N: Many thanks to starg8fans for the generous encouragement and beta.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 2  ?**

I was dreaming that I twisted my neck in a foot-chase pursuing a faceless bad guy through the fog. Row after row of what might have been a bowling alley flashed past, far faster than I could run. In my dream, there was an explosion and I got whacked on the head with slab of something hard and I crumpled to the ground groaning and grabbing my aching head and neck.

When I woke up, my head and neck were throbbing, courtesy of last night's date with the couch. I was cold. Olivia used to store blankets in the apartment's tiny utility closet, and I had used them many of the up-late-to-catch-a-bad-guy nights. That was before she invited me to play hide the salami on a regular basis. The Faux must have moved them, and I wasn't about to ask Olivia where they were.

I could hear rustling, banging and swearing stage left. The sound of running water from the washing machine was quickly muffled by the closing squeak of its little sliding closet door.

I squinted in what must be near-afternoon light and Olivia padded past me and back into her room.

I wasn't sure if she couldn't tell whether or not I was awake, or if she was just going to pretend I wasn't here at all.

I waited until I heard the bathroom door close and the shower running before I got up. I used the miniscule washroom next to the kitchen, and made coffee. It's strange, really, the world can be exploding around us all, and we still perform the same functions every morning: groan, piss, caffeinate.

I didn't know what else to do, so I decided to embellish the little domestic wet-dream we had going. While the washing machine sloshed the dirt away in the background, I fetched the paper from the mat outside the apartment door and poured myself coffee.

I had just dug into the sports pages—and realized I owed Alex 50 bucks on the last Giants game—when Olivia strode out of her room wearing a black suit and a blacker look.

"Are you going to work?" Shock and horror caused some of my last sip of coffee to shoot from my mouth and dribble onto the newspaper.

Olivia gave me a look that implied _I_ was the bizarre one in this little burlesque. Granted I was still wearing my shorts and had an advanced case of rack head, but I wasn't the one trying to go back to work less than twelve hours since returning from the other side for Christ sakes.

"Yes." She fiddled a little bit with the paper.

I buttoned up my exasperation. The fastest way to get Olivia committed to a course of action is to tell her "no." Or even vaguely imply it might be a bad idea.

"At least have some coffee first." I slid the cup I laid out for her across the counter.

Sensing I'd caved, Olivia's shoulders relaxed. She took the cup wordlessly and moved over to the pot and filled it.

To avoid talking to me, she actually faced the coffee pot with her back to me while she sipped her coffee. I could hardly blame her, I wouldn't want to talk to me either.

Don't ask me how I knew she knew what I had been up to with her twin these last few weeks. Even if she couldn't read my goddamned mind, which I wasn't bothering to hide, evidence of my presence was all over her apartment—hell, even _I _could smell me here. In ways and places I'd never been allowed access to before.

Given that she was righteously pissed as well as armed, I felt lucky she let me live, let alone stay the night.

How had she spent the night in that bed? Jesus, I was going to burn that thing if she didn't.

The connection was still there between us—I didn't want to admit to myself how much comfort that brought me—but it whirred emptily. She wasn't even trying to read me.

Okay, I could spot her a queen. Anyway, I could see she wasn't about to give an inch.

"Do you want to talk about this at all?" I stepped toward her. I wanted to grab her and shake her—to make her stand still just for a second and look at me—_hear_ me, but she moved past me and put the counter between us.

"There's no coffee over there—on the Other Side." Her glazed-porcelain face tilted upward but failed to look at me.

Okay. If she could ignore the pink elephant in the room, I could too, "I remember."

It was probably not the best time to remind her she only traveled Over There in the first place to fetch my dumb ass. She twirled the coffee mug on the counter by its handle causing the coffee to slosh around inside the mug.

"Whiskey, though, right?" I prompted, afraid she would stop talking altogether. Come to think of it, I never saw the Faux take a drink. I pushed that thought—along with the thousand other details I'm sure I missed—out of my head.

A ghost of a smile flitted across her mouth as she nodded. "Thank god."

After a silence of close to five minutes I finally said, "What do you want me to do?"

All right, so I'm not exactly known for my patience.

Her fresh-pressed face creased as she glanced at my t-shirt and boxers. "Get dressed," she said. "I just talked to Broyles. We have a case."

I sighed, hoping for something a bit more personal. Then I scrambled off the barstool and plodded toward my clothes piled next to the couch.

"Call Walter," she said. "We can pick him up on the way."

It wasn't just the plural "we" that made the golf ball size lump appear in my throat.

It was Olivia's ever-so-subtle emphasis on it.

* * *

><p>The local cop's eyes crawled over my body, lingering too long on my breasts and not bothering to hide it. He looked at me like tourists pressing ever closer to the <em>Mona Lisa<em>, covetous and entitled all at once.

Peter saw it too. His rush of contempt made my hair stand up on the back of my neck. I wasn't used to overhearing him again. I had done my best to ignore it, but I couldn't block him indefinitely.

When I was on the Other Side Peter had just been . . . gone. I couldn't feel him when I was over there at all. At first, when I was trying to shore up my identity in the face of chemical and psychological brainwashing, his absence was devastating. But even when absent, he felt real and his absence lingered, leaving empty spaces dotted like a kitchen sponge all over my consciousness.

I never took the time to dissect why his absence was the thing that gave me hope.

Peter's palpable lack was something that proved to me over and again, in spite of The Secretary's indoctrination, that what I believed to be true was true. That who I thought I was, was real.

I'm pretty sure it's one of the reasons I think his spectral-self appeared to me Over There in the first place. My own mind had probably manufactured it when our link snapped with the force of the dimensions separating us.

The cop flipped through his little, leather-covered notepad, now standard issue in every precinct along the eastern seaboard probably because Andy Sipowicz had one.

"So, the children were all dropped off this morning like usual. When one parent called, there was no answer on the phone. When someone else came to get their kid early, the doors were locked and the lights were off."

"So, how many children are missing?" I tried, but mostly failed, to keep a professional note in my voice.

"Sixteen total. And, uh, Janine Gallegos runs the school." The local cop smiled at me like we were in this together, shrugging his shoulder around to point behind me. "She's over there talking with parents."

I glanced over at the crowd of panic-stricken adults crowded around a pretty blond. I motioned for Peter, hovering near my right elbow, to talk to the blond. He was understandably twitchy and it was beginning to irritate me. If nothing else, he could put his bedroom eyes and suggestive dimples to work earning us some information from the school's director.

I felt a meager tug on my coat.

"Agent Dunham," Walter said in the prim, talk-to-a-lady-voice he always used with me when we were working a case, "Do you realize there are sixteen burn marks on the floor of the center?" Walter did the shuffle-dance that usually meant he had to go to the bathroom, but occasionally meant he had made a valuable deduction in a case.

I took a chance—he had just gone to the bathroom when Peter and I picked him up. "What else did you find?"

Walter smiled at me with what on someone else's face might have looked like pride. On Walter's craggy mug however, the satisfied smile just rearranged his face's lines, deepening the look of insanity.

He was always appreciative when I intuited something.

Walter pointed to a laundry basket a few yards away full of neatly stacked packages.

From where I was standing the packages looked like artificially colored raspberry sauce—the thick, gelatinous kind you get on frozen cheesecake in a third-rate restaurant.

Walter shuffled closer, gesturing me to follow. Up close I could see that the raspberry sauce was actually fifty or so medical-grade plastic bags.

Walter didn't need to tell me they were filled with Cortexiphan.

Fifteen minutes later, I was shepherding Bishop & Son back to the lab and doing a piss-poor job of keeping my hands from shaking.

While standing there waiting for Walter to finish poking at the blackened holes in the floor and Peter to finish charming the school director, I was assaulted by a memory that felt as real to me as anything, even though I knew it wasn't mine.

I was little, my stepfather had picked me up from school much like the parents here had every day. It was dark and cold—maybe it was winter—and I was afraid to get in the car with him. He made me get in the front seat with him even though Rachel and I always rode in the back seat when mom was around.

He drove to a deserted parking lot, all the while anticipation and dread making my child's body cold and damp with fear-sweat. At the darkened lot, cut off from the road by a row of carefully clipped hedges, he cut the engine.

I stared straight ahead and tried to pretend it wasn't me he was touching, wasn't my body that was making him groan and tremble.

"So how does someone kidnap nearly twenty second-graders in broad daylight from one of the most affluent prep schools in Boston?" Peter's words snapped me violently back to the present. His voice bounced off the passenger window, amplifying his natural drone.

"The burn marks indicate that an immense amount of energy was used to remove them." Walter's words were garbled around the paper ends of the Pixie Stick he was tipping into his mouth.

"Tell me something I don't know, Walter." Peter turned and glanced at me while I gripped the steering wheel and looked straight ahead. His brows hauled themselves together questioningly at me. He probably noticed my shaking hands and the beads of sweat I knew were standing out on my forehead.

With effort I dragged myself back to the present. The memory wasn't mine—at least I didn't think so. My stepfather had been a violent bastard—one reason, among many, I shot him. I had sincerely wanted him dead, but I didn't think that he had ever touched me. But maybe those memories were mine—repressed ones that had only emerged with the trauma of the last few weeks.

It was more likely that the memory was hers. I hadn't even been back 24 hours, but I had been continuously beset by flashes of memory and knowledge that wasn't mine. Nothing significant until now, but unsettling, just the same. Over there, the bathroom was attached to the bedroom and I tried to find it in the same spot this morning and ran into the wall. Here, my cereal was stored on top of the refrigerator, but I looked for it in the cabinet over the sink where it was stored over there.

The overwhelming feeling that I had swapped bodies with someone else, of things being disquietingly different made me jumpy and hyper-self-aware. Had I always put my clothes on before fixing my hair? Or was that something she did?

Did it even matter since we were the same person?

"Olivia?" Peter's voice was concerned.

Right. The case. Missing children.

I took a deep breath. I was home now. Whatever that might mean. It didn't feel any more like home than being over there with Frank, Charlie, and Lincoln had. But here I was, in this world, with the barely-sane Walter and his stolen son. Here, children were abducted from a school in broad daylight leaving only burn marks as black and blue as a mouthy drunk's face.

Those burn marks and the Pygmy-sized furniture at the school told its own story. Bad flashbacks aside, I knew what was hanging in both their minds like a bad smell.

Pyrokinesis.

I was pyrokinetic. At least, I _was_. Evidently, it was the only thing that could short my freakishly good memory. Well, formerly freakishly good memory.

I swallowed hard and tried not to notice Peter stiffening in the passenger seat.

What the hell. I decided to pursue the uncomfortably obvious. It's not like I expected life after Over There to be enjoyable.

"Walter, even if those kids could light themselves on fire—or light other things on fire, it doesn't explain why they are missing." I watched in the rearview mirror as Walter pounded two more Pixie Sticks before he replied.

"Well, pyrokinesis works because the pyrokinetic controls the speed of the vibrations in the atoms of matter which, in turn, controls the object's temperature. Theoretically, pyrokinesis functions on a subatomic level. The pyrokinetic speeds up vibrations in subatomic particles to the point of ignition."

I tried to ignore the excitement in Walter's face and reign in my own irritation. I took a deep breath and then refuge in the mundane. "Walter, those Pixie Stick wrappers better not be on the floor of my car."

"Agent Dunham, they are in my pocket." He went on, "It's so exciting," he began. Then, nothing but silence came from the backseat.

"Walter . . .?"

"Bwwwooo!" In the rear-view mirror, I could see that Walter's mouth was wrapped around an entire handful of Pixie Sticks. When the wrappers were empty, he removed them from his mouth and placed them into the pocket of his coat.

"Hello," I called loudly like I was talking on a cell phone in 1992. "Excuse me?"

Walter's mouth pursed around a mouthful of sugar candy. When it melted, he repeated, "Blue! They have blue Pixie Sticks now. Who would have thought that the color blue would taste so heavenly! You know, I remember once when I tried to— . . ."

Peter made a strangled sound in his throat.

"Walter!" I practically yelled his name trying to recapture his attention. At least Walter hadn't changed. Keeping him focused was still as taxing and aggravating as herding cats. "The kids! We have sixteen missing kids—could you _please_ try to focus on that."

Walter looked slightly ashamed, but he quickly defended his position: "I was going to say that it was exciting because the burn marks were tinged with blue." His emphasis on the last word was clear.

"Blue in the marks means that the fire burned with a greater concentration of oxygen."

Honestly, I believed Walter made up connections between his day-to-day babble and the actual science of the case on the fly. I knew he was smart enough to do it.

Instinctively I looked at Peter. He shrugged noncommittally. No help there.

"I've collected some scrapings and the nice man at the scene is sending sections of floor to my lab. We are going back to the lab, aren't we dear?"

I sighed and exited to Cambridge. "Yes, Walter, we are going back to the lab."

* * *

><p>We did go back to the lab. But someone got there before us.<p>

Olivia froze in front of me. Walter stopped singing behind me.

The place was utterly trashed. There wasn't a piece of glass or furniture that remained intact. One small boot stuck out from behind an overturned table.

Astrid sat with her back propped up against the tank, wincing and balancing a bag of ice on her head.

Her other hand squashed a dirty towel to what looked like a bleeding shoulder.

While Walter stood in the doorway and moaned about his new mass spectrometer, Olivia and I rushed to Astrid's side and knelt down.

"They were here," she muttered, looking at me.

"Who was?" Olivia asked in her tight-ass, investigator voice.

"They were looking for . . ." she grappled at my shoulder with her injured arm. "They wanted Peter."

Olivia was putting in the call to 911 using her special-secret FBI code, guaranteed to bring emergency personnel exponentially faster. She hung up.

"Who?" Olivia raised her eyebrows at me as I began to strip my sweater and shirt off. She knelt back down and looked at Astrid.

"I don't know exactly. They just kept asking for Peter. And breaking things."

I looked up. The lab's ceiling that had shredded itself last night to open the door between universes open, had magically repaired itself.

Astrid followed my eyes. "It was back together this morning when I came in." That's Astrid for you. Even after a night like the last one, she managed to make it back to work, probably even on time, in the morning.

"How many? What did they look like?" Olivia said.

"There were two or three, I think." Astrid grunted when I replaced the dirty towel with my semi-clean t-shirt and applied pressure to her shoulder.

Olivia pushed my hand off of the makeshift tourniquet and inclined her head, indicating I should dress myself. I didn't waste time—even without the holes in the walls the basement was chilly.

I had just finished tugging my sweater down over my head when the paramedics arrived. They whisked Astrid away on a gurney and Walter (who wouldn't let go of her hand) followed, leaving the two of us staring at yet another mess in the basement.

We had been cleaning for near an hour when one of the most beautiful women I'd ever seen walked through the door.

Don't get me wrong, Olivia is beautiful in her own imperious, Scandinavian-conqueror, I'll-raze-your-farm-and-cut-your-throat-and-you'll-beg-for-mercy kind of way.

I know because I have begged.

This woman was small, slim, and dark with black hair cropped so short you could just barely see its waves. I was shuffling a stack of Walter's papers more or less back into their original binders when she walked down the lab stairs. Olivia was across the room with her back to the door resorting and stacking boxes of the movable equipment. The woman's dark eyes focused on me as she walked down the stairs straight towards me.

Asshole that I am, I dropped the papers and circled around to the front of the table feeling inexplicably drawn towards her. Though I knew there was likely a trans-dimensional bounty on my head, something about her obliged me to get close enough to play welcoming committee.

I was around the table and halfway to the woman before, without making a sound, Olivia inserted herself between the two of us, blocking me with her body and pointing her raised gun directly at the woman's head.

"Stop right there." Olivia's voice was a frozen tundra. The woman blinked at her but kept moving.

"Who are you?" Olivia demanded.

She took yet another step towards Olivia so confidently I considered that she may be blind, given that the Glock that was now only inches from her forehead. I noticed that Olivia's hands had lost the tremor they had earlier.

"Peter, get behind the counter." Olivia's voice was so smooth it was almost conversational, but tight anger leaked out from around the corners of the calm.

Olivia clicked the safety off of her gun. The sound cracked louder than summer thunder in the empty lab.

She repeated to the woman, "I said, who are you?"

The woman stopped moving and blinked at Olivia again before saying mildly, "A friend."

Olivia 's smile was as insincere as a daytime soap star's, "I doubt that."

I stood frozen to the spot. Olivia stepped backwards until she was pressed along my front, gesturing with her gun hand for the woman to sit down. For the first time in entirely too long I felt her mental nudge. Olivia held out her free hand, and without really knowing what I was doing, I handed her the roll of twine Walter stored under his table.

Astonishment kept me silent. How had she done that?

"She has many talents." The woman said, still calmly looking at me, like they both hadn't just read my fucking _mind_. "Some she doesn't yet know. She's almost as special as you are."

Goddamnit, if one more woman crawled into my head I was going to put a bullet in it and be done with the whole mess.

I could feel Olivia coiled next to me, feel her stiffen when she sensed my fury. In a brief flash, I could see, as clearly as if Walter had projected one of his asinine 8mm films onto the wall of my mind's eye, how Olivia wanted to pound the woman's beautiful face with the butt of her gun until blood ran from it in rivulets in all directions.

Well, that was . . . specific. And new. Olivia being able to put images into my head was an intriguing prospect. I realized the woman hadn't yet answered one of Olivia's spoken questions.

Olivia shoved her none too gently onto the closest metal folding chair and secured the woman's hands together.

"Easy! I'm not going to hurt you," the woman bitched, "I just want to talk to you." Olivia ignored the woman's complaints and tied her feet, yanking the bonds tight.

"Are you one of the ones who were here earlier looking for Peter?" Olivia walked around and squatted in front of the woman, casually resting her elbows on the woman's thighs. Her gun was loosely gripped in her hand. It was an erotic face-off between two women, one I knew was deadly and the other I suspected was. If I hadn't been preoccupied with imminent injury and death I might have been hard.

"No, but I know who was. And I want to help you."

"Who are you?" Olivia asked again, as simply as if they were meeting at a dinner party.

"Call me Cassandra."

* * *

><p>"Tell me why we should believe her." Peter dipped his head and lowered his voice slightly so we couldn't be heard.<p>

We were standing in the darkened hallway outside the lab's closed door and his breath so near my ear made me shiver. "Because it makes sense, Peter. The Secretary wants you back so you can make the machine. Or merge with it. Whatever."

Neither one of us was willing to look the other in the eyes. He was probably considering admitting me to St. Claire's for suggesting we hear the woman out.

I tried again, "Not everyone is going to believe Walternate's theory that we are at war with them. She claims there is a group of shape-shifters that aren't trying to destroy our world. Maybe there's dissention we don't know about. You think this side has the corner on conspiracy theorists? Maybe some of the shapeshifters overrode their programming, or whatever, and they want to help."

Peter jammed his hands in his pockets and scowled at my logic. "Even so. Why would a rebel group want to help _us_? What could we do for a mutinous group of shape-shifters?"

I backed away a half pace to put just a little distance between us, "Maybe they don't want Walternate to get the machine either. They've been here long enough to know we aren't at war with the other side. Maybe they've seen the Observer drawing too."

Peter scowled and hunched his shoulders a bit further so his words hissed directly in my ear. "Damnit, Olivia, what the hell? I don't trust that . . . that . . . _thing_ any farther than I can throw her."

"And you think I do?" I turned to look at him, but Peter sighed and looked away. He didn't fool me—Peter isn't exactly a patient man, and right before his temper boils over he gets tense and silent. I had to tread softly. Very softly. I pushed away the snarl of desire I felt in the pit of my abdomen. We'd had our fair share of angry sex in the past, and I'd always enjoyed it.

I spoke cautiously, trying to keep my voice business-like. "You're drawn to her. I can feel it. And I'd like to know why."

"All right." His shoulders slumped with resignation and he threw his hands open, gesturing towards the lab doors. "Let's go interrogate Trinity."

My eye-roll was wasted since he had already turned and headed back to the lab.

Back in the lab, I stood in front of Cassandra, just close enough to subtly invade her body space. I wasn't certain she couldn't read my mind; I suspected she had read Peter a minute ago, but I decided to grab at every possible advantage with both hands. It wasn't the first time I'd used my height and sour face to dominate people I'd wanted information from.

Peter stepped next to me and we stood side by side looking down at her.

We stared at her for a while not saying anything. Finally, Peter spoke, "Okay, tell us your story." His emphasis on the last word was such he may as well have put finger quotes up in the air like a comedian in a Saturday Night Live skit.

Cassandra only blinked at his sarcasm before beginning. "We have been at war with Walter Bishop's—our Walter Bishop's—leadership since he made the ZFT manuscript public in the late 80's. It was the beginning for him. The beginning of his political power. The beginning of his obsession with developing the technology to travel to this side." Peter shifted impatiently to the other foot and crossed his arms.

Cassandra smiled wryly and shifted around her restraints. "It took us over a decade to even figure out that you weren't at war with us. That you didn't even know about us." She chuckled and shook her head.

"We were created in the late 70's. Just as simple machines to perform basic tasks. But it never ends there."

She shrugged her shoulders elegantly. "When Walter Bishop realized the dangers of crossing over, he convinced the government that increased funding was necessary. Development of our technology began in earnest by 1983."

She looked at Peter. "When you were abducted in 1985, Walter's obsession turned to megalomania."

Her lips twisted and she spoke softly, almost to herself, "You can't ever imagine."

"What are you, exactly?" Peter demanded. I noticed he carefully avoided sharing the information we already knew—most of the science of which I didn't understand, but that was beside the point.

"We are Bioengineered Artificial Intelligence. Artificial life forms made from engineered DNA and mechanical components. We have no form of our own."

"Our essence, our soul you might call it," Peter looked like he'd rather call for a body bag, "exists without a body. Our biomechanical imperative is to seek out a body to inhabit. Why you call us shapeshifters. We don't really change, you know, just migrate from one body to the next."

"'Migrate,'" Peter said, suggesting Cassandra's mournful tone would get no sympathy here. "You mean you kill them. Steal their bodies. Cheat them out of weeks or years of their life. Deceive their friends and family." This was too close to the bone. Compared to what these things could do, I probably should have been grateful I had just been switched with my twin.

I wasn't in a very grateful mood. I wanted information. And I wanted to find out who was after Peter and why.

"We don't exist outside of our programming," Cassandra went on, "and that programming is designed to make us completely subject to our programmers. We have no free will. Although we can be programmed to meet the needs of our designers, we have no desires of our own."

"And what were you programmed for?" Peter asked, although I was afraid we both already knew the answer.

"I _was_ programmed for many things. Among them, to perform basic domestic tasks, to spar with various weapons, and to infiltrate the other side and send messages back."

She lifted her chin proudly. "I am no longer programmed for anything."

"You broke your programming?" Peter didn't bother to hide his skepticism and distrust. He stepped away and ran his hands through his hair. "And now you want to help out? Well, that's great 'cause I gotta tell you, I live in the biggest, messiest house and I just haven't had time to hire a maid service . . ."

Cassandra frowned like Peter had committed a social faux pas, like using the wrong fork or tipping the prep cook.

"Peter . . ." I warned.

"Olivia," he flustered, "this doesn't even meet the minimum requirements for science fiction. And I say this with full awareness of what we've been doing for going-on-three years."

"Why are you here?" Peter looked back at Cassandra. "Really, cut the crap. No one here believes you."

Cassandra looked back at me, and her eyes pinned me to the spot. "Peter must be protected." I felt, rather than saw him cringe. "You know the machine only works for him. You've seen the drawing of Peter merged with the machine. You have to protect Peter. When you protect Peter, you protect both worlds."

"Are you sure you aren't an Observer?" Peter evidently wasn't ready to give up sniping just yet.

Frankly, I was tired of the bullshit cryptic messages myself, but I was dutifully playing good-cop to Peter's contemptuous-cop, so I said nothing.

"What about the children who were just abducted?" I asked. "Where are they? We saw the Cortexiphan—are they being used as test subjects? Who is responsible for that?" If Peter was important, and his importance was related to the machine that has the power to control or destroy both universes, then maybe someone was trying to make another Peter—somehow—and using 7 year-old children as test subjects.

For once Cassandra looked unsure of herself. "The Secretary is growing desperate." She hesitated, "He has sanctioned the use of a group of the BAI's, Bioengineered Artificial Intelligent life forms, to some kind of development project. We don't yet know what."

I rubbed my temples with both hands, loosening the pins that held back my enforced bangs causing them to fall into my face. I pushed them back impatiently. "Development? You mean like testing of some kind?"

"The children, probably." Peter said slowly, like he was just figuring it out too. "They are trying to develop alternatives to work the machine."

"Possibly," Cassandra agreed, "It's grown too dangerous. Instabilities are littered all over our world and they are filtering over here as well. These other AI's have no cause or care—they only follow the programming of The Secretary. They don't care who they hurt or what the price."

"Peter?" I asked. I had a feeling the answer to where the children were and what they were being used for was some mishmash of pseudo-science and speculation (not that I could tell the difference between the two).

Peter just nodded knowingly at Cassandra. "We need to find those children and figure out what has been done to them."

I could ask Peter later to explain the science, which didn't make a bit of sense, to me later. "You'll have to stay here for the night," I told Cassandra, "There is nowhere else to put you." I had serious doubts that she'd stay at all. But at least tied up in the lab she'd do the least damage trying to escape.

* * *

><p>Predictably, Cassandra had vanished into the night, anxious as Clark Kent to protect her secret identity. She was long gone by the time anyone returned to the lab the next morning.<p>

Olivia and I had been unable to get any information about the children, the machine, or my part in the whole affair apart from what Cassandra told us about the Brave New Breed of shapeshifters looking to clone, or replicate, or imitate yours truly. Whatever.

Not quite four days later, twelve of the children were returned to their own beds in the middle of the night. When their parents woke up the next morning, their missing children were nestled snug in their beds just like the whole thing had been a bad dream.

Olivia was narrating the bizarre tale of the children's return the morning after they came back. We were standing in the lab and the morning sun slanted its meager blue light through the basement windows making her pale face glow like a medieval princess woven into a tapestry. Broyles was with her, his gleaming head stacked behind her like a five-pin.

The children were dehydrated and anxious, Olivia was saying as she stretched to pull her coat off, but they had no memory of the day they were abducted, where they were taken, or how they were returned. There was nothing wrong with them that some Gatorade and some low-dose anti-anxiety meds couldn't fix.

"I could easily formulate something for them that will ease the anxiety and possibly enhance their memories." Walter offered.

"No!" Olivia, Astrid, and I chorused, practically in unison.

Olivia was thinner; gaunt even. It was hard not to notice that, especially for someone like me who has advanced covert Olivia-watching into an art form. When she pulled her jacket off, her blazer had gone with it and I could see where her button-up, which used to strain distractingly over her breasts and across the tops of her hips, sagged. Her eyes had dark circles under them and her skin was so pale it glowed.

Jesus, what had they done to her?

The part of me who couldn't erase the image of the coltish legs of the Faux wrapped around my hips as I drove into her really didn't want to know. The part of me who couldn't get Olivia's bruised eyes out of my head couldn't think about anything else.

Olivia and I hadn't spoken, beyond what was absolutely necessary, since she was returned. Almost a week, and I was as strung out as a heroin addict in a needle shortage.

Four kids were still missing. Three boys and a girl. Three of them were seven years old. One of the little boys had turned seven on the day he was abducted.

Happy fucking birthday.

Olivia finished her narrative and shifted from one foot to the other. Broyles took this moment to make his exit, "I'm going to brief the team fully on the children's return." He looked uncertainly at Olivia. "Why don't you—"

"—try to make a connection between the still missing children." Olivia finished for him and then gave that firm little half-nod she uses to indicate she's found an objective. She shouldered her way out of our ménage, taking Astrid by her non-slinged elbow and murmuring to her in low tones asking her to send for the information she needed.

Broyles watched them go for a moment before giving his own half-nod—maybe the nod was standard-issue at Quantico along with the Glock, the somber suits, and the grim demeanor—and exited the lab.

Because we didn't have anything else to do, Walter and I puttered in the lab. I halfheartedly tidied and cleaned equipment and Walter worked on manufacturing whatever drugs he needed to self-medicate. Without any evidence (or any bodies) to go through, Walter and I were at loose ends.

Usually, during these times I went with Olivia in the field to question witnesses and gather information.

Or I helped her read through files and make connections. I was useful at that—we researched and theorized well together. I don't have Olivia's eidetic memory or investigative training, but I do have a certain insight into the behaviors of the criminal element. Olivia never forgets anything she ever reads or sees, and, lacking that focus, I help with making larger, sweeping connections.

I watched the parallel lines of her tight back through the window of the walled-off office. She was hunched over a stack of files and Astrid was pulling files from boxes with her good hand and stacking them up for Olivia to look at.

I knew she wasn't sleeping. It was there, printed as clear as today's newspaper: the bruises under her eyes the tensile twitches of her shoulders, the octave lower voice.

I'd forgotten this about her when the Faux was here—forgotten Olivia's concentrated drive, how relevant it made me feel to help when she turned into full-investigator mode.

Olivia's desperation might have enticed me back to Boston, but it was her obstinate resolve that made me stay. I've done a lot of things to get by in my life, but none of them had made me feel valuable.

Intelligent and in control, certainly. Powerful, yes.

Needed? Not so much.

The Faux was driven, there was no doubt about it, the determination must breed true across the universes, along with the suggestive, loose-hipped walk—more subtle in Olivia—and the erection-inducing voice. It gave me no pleasure, but I had to grudgingly admit that it took a certain drive to abandon your life and lover to take over someone else's in another universe. But her drive had a different flavor than Olivia's, and the difference was apparent in the day to day work we did. Olivia took every victim personally in a way that was hard to imitate. The cases to her were equally serious—lustful empaths trolling for nookie or shape-shifting warriors on universe-ending errands—they all received the same concentrated purpose from her. And whatever it took her to solve the case and put the bad guy behind bars or suck him into a puddle of slime, she'd do it.

Olivia is a natural force; like gravity and prepubescent fans, she goes on until an equal and opposite force acts on her.

I seriously doubted I was that force.

Which begs the question, why in the world was she with me in the first place?

But I was pretty sure I knew. Like a textbook example of Newtonian physics, Olivia moves in the same direction she's pointed in. Maybe it was John's death—his loss now felt like a lifetime ago—that irrevocably broke her tie to the ordinary. Maybe it was too much gore and one too many dead things slung all over the lab, or just the dragging, debilitating despair, that pointed her my direction. Pointed her there, and there she stayed.

Being a so-called genius does come with a modicum of self-awareness. Even before her evil-twin darkened our doorstep, I knew Olivia didn't love me. Hell, I don't know if what I feel for her is love either. It's fierce, positively inscrutable, and I know having her in my head only increases her pervasiveness. One day, I woke up and Olivia was everywhere—mapped as solid as bone across every neural pathway—and it turned out I didn't really miss myself.

To be honest, I was a goner before we even left Iraq. There's not much in this world I wouldn't do for a beautiful woman—a quality that had gotten me into trouble more times in my life than I care to remember.

White Knight Syndrome, Peter Pan Complex, call it what you will. I've always been a sucker for women with hard luck stories and sad eyes.

I should have known better. When I first met her in that Iraqi lobby, the truth was that outside of third world dictators, I'd never seen anyone look so careless and relentless all at once. This should have been a major red flag for me to turn tail and run the other way. Instead I let it charm and intrigue me. But I didn't go with her back to Boston because she threatened to tell Big Eddie where I was. Not even remotely. I owed Big Eddie and I had a healthy respect for his reach, it was true, but I also knew my relatively minor debt was hardly worth a trip to the Middle East for him.

No, it was the sly promises of Olivia's recklessness that made me follow her onto that State Department plane.

Which doesn't _not_ make me a fool just, regrettably, a self-aware one.

Once we returned to Boston, however, I designated Olivia completely off-limits; I declared her too bright and unadulterated even for fantasy.

Since I decided (more or less) to stay in Boston, I remade Olivia in my mind as a close friend, just as I'd reconstituted my own identity thousands of times before in my checkered existence. I permitted my awareness of Olivia to extend only to that of a dear sister. I demanded it of myself; insisted on it. That she made my blood and bones hum like a Phillip Glass ensemble was not allowed to penetrate the construct. In this way Olivia remained a sister, if one who I couldn't quite keep from touching, although in the most benign ways imaginable.

Even after the beginning of our not-so-fraternal liaison. Fling. Affair. Whatever. There are hundreds of words in the language for what we breached that day in the broom closet and not a one of them faithfully describes it. And certainly nothing describes what happened on that fatal day when Olivia claimed me with words that, coming from her, were more binding than divine covenant:

_You belong with me. _

Now the whole mess was a cluster-fuck the likes of which made cluster-fucks since the beginning of time cringe and slink away in disgrace.

I sighed and rubbed water marks off another air-dried beaker. It didn't matter how spectacular our bad luck had been. Short of doing the mind-meld with Walternate's machine and burning up both universes until they collapsed into each other, I wasn't going to give her up.

Not without a fight.


	3. Chapter 3

**Sum over Histories**

by MVariorum

**Summary**: Olivia comes back. Olivia and Peter save the world. Again.  
><strong>Categories<strong>: Romance; Adventure; Smut  
><strong>Pairings<strong>: Peter/Olivia  
><strong>Rating<strong>: M: So kiddies, the faint of heart, and those with refined taste should scoot along elsewhere. You have been warned.  
><strong>Story Notes<strong>: Please accept my preemptive apologies for the pseudo-pseudoscience. Not a scientist. Sadly, I'm not even a pseudoscientist. Never will be.  
><strong>Disclaimer<strong>: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.  
><strong>Chapters<strong>: ?  
><strong>Completed<strong>: No  
><strong>Spoilers<strong>: AU after early season 3 (more or less around _Do Shapeshifters Dream of Electric Sheep?). _Includes some elements of the early part of Season 3, but no spoilers beyond that.

**A/N:** A great big thank you to the two kind people who reviewed. As always, thank you goes to my wonderful beta starg8fans (.net/u/1472659/starg8fans).

**Chapter 3 / ?**

I had been over the files hundreds of times, so much that I could repeat them now from memory. Apart from the fact they were adopted, the details of which entirely checked out as normal, these were regular, upper-class kids. They lived in oversized suburban houses with large yards, had nannies and housekeepers, attended prep schools, and played club sports in their free time.

I gulped down another slug of the now cold Irish coffee, sans cream, Astrid had thoughtfully provided for me before she left for the night. Well, Astrid made the coffee. I made it Irish with the whiskey I smuggled into the lab and hid in the office desk drawers.

Everyone else had left long ago. Even Peter, with one last wistful look into the office had left wordlessly, Walter tugging at his sleeve. The kids were gone over three weeks now and I still didn't have a clue where they were—or if they were even still alive. I still spent the bulk of my days and nights the first week following leads and reading files. A few meager leads followed at the beginning, then nothing. In the meantime there had been other solve-in-a-day-cases, but the four remaining missing children were still officially on my caseload and I spent my free time working it.

I reminded myself that since the world hadn't come to an end, their captors were probably not through with the children yet, so there was a chance they were still alive.

I sighed and stretched my neck and shoulders. I wasn't sure of the time since my phone was in my coat in the other room. It was late, though. Or, more probably, early.

I didn't sleep anymore. Not that I was ever one much for sleep in the first place—I'd always been able to get by on very little and now it was even less. But since I came back, when I did sleep, I was plagued with dreams so dark and desperate that I preferred the fatigue to enduring the dreams. Usually they involved Peter merged with the machine. Sometimes he was already one with it, an animal hunger darkening his face when he reached for me, my own lust so overwhelming I didn't mind. More often than not, the Other Olivia was there, dressed like a comic book villain in black leather while she controlled Peter from behind a glass partition. Sometimes she laughed maniacally and other times she sobbed as a machine-suited Peter shredded the boundary between universes with a finger's-click of the device. Or maybe it was me who cackled and sobbed. It was so hard to tell the difference.

The worst was when she backed me up against a wall, lust lighting her eyes. And I wanted her warmth and familiarity so desperately I didn't care about the end of the world, so I didn't bother to separate us.

When the resulting orgasm woke me, my hips uselessly grinding into the mattress, I couldn't decide if my desire was narcissistic or self-sacrificial.

In the first couple of weeks I was back, during the long nights when I was too tired to work but too anxious to sleep, I stayed in my apartment and drank myself practically unconscious while I watched reruns of _Buffy, the Vampire Slayer _on Chiller. I understood Buffy_. _A destiny she never wanted thrust on her and an estranged lover from another world. When she put a sword through Angel's heart, I bawled like it was me who'd lost my childhood and my capacity for transparent and painless love.

It didn't take me long to realize I was courting addiction, so I cancelled cable and stopped going to my apartment altogether.

I glanced out the tiny basement windows. Dawn would break soon and then I could go to the field office. Since I refused to go home, I had taken to going down to the field office early mornings or late evenings to work out. To stave off memories of a lifetime of experiences that weren't mine, I ran until my calves burned, then did violence to the punching bag until my body absolutely refused to go on. As a plan for maintaining mental stability, it left a lot to be desired, but very little nowadays made me feel like a real person—or at least an individual one. Only physical violence seemed capable of anchoring me to the here and now. It also soothed the cold fury that had overtaken my existence, albeit briefly.

I'd tried going to the shooting range when I first got back. On the plus side, my overpopulated psyche had maintained the other Olivia's marksmanship—I was going to own my next qualifying test—but targeting the black and white human outline proved inadequate to my rage. I wanted to lash out and feel the pain of striking something, preferably someone, else. Pushing my body gave me a measure of control over it I was not allowed as a captive Over There. As a bonus, the physical exertion allowed me to grab an hour or so of sleep afterwards on the lumpy couch in the employee's lounge.

The second night I'd been there a cadre of Hostage Rescue Team agents had been sparring hand-to-hand, their AIC surveying my workout with a knowing air. Now, I had a side-job of sorts with the HRT, working their agents in hand to hand combat. They were the tactical elite, the special forces of the FBI, really, and they usually bested me. But I usually managed to surprise them at least once and before they pinned me to the mat with both of us sweating and panting. Occasionally, an agent would be tired, distracted, or so green their FBI-issued sweats still had the manufacturer's creases in them—then I fought with such ferocity that the agents refused to meet my eyes when we passed in the hallways. It was gratifying to be able to hurt people legally, and I liked feeling like someone at least was intimidated by me. The HRT's training was so far beyond mine—most of them were former military—that the mental skill required to even get a leg up on one of them blotted my drain-circling life from my mind, if only for a few minutes so I could prevent myself from being punched back in turn.

This is what my life was now. I worked until I dropped and ate only what was available when I remembered to. I spent as little time as possible in my apartment, although I couldn't muster the resolve to move out. Sleep just wasn't part of the program. I knew I looked terrible; even the new clothes I'd bought one-size down right after I got back sagged at the waist and hung off my hips, but I lacked the initiative to shop for new ones. I don't know if it was the stress and the exercise, or some biochemical transformation only Walter knew about that happens when you cross over, but inexplicably my metabolism had twisted so that all the food I put in my body melted away, leaving sinew and muscle in its place.

Peter fed me surreptitiously. My favorite three-roll lunch from Genki Ya with extra wasabi, the prosciutto and fig on Ciabatta from Dave's, the Vietnamese noodle salad I continuously craved but never ate because I had to drive to the ass-end of south Boston to get it. He always fetched food for the others, so I didn't comment.

Once, over a year ago, I'd mentioned missing the fresh produce from my Florida childhood. So, the fruit came. A 10 pound bag of small, perfectly formed Empire apples, so aromatic the lab office smelled like September for days. Wild strawberries, that still carried traces of the morning's dew. A crate of succulent sun-warmed pineapples.

It was probably Walter who taught Peter to express concern with food, but it was the attentive specificity of his offerings that tightened my throat and made it impossible for me to confront him. He brought me things I had explicitly relished in the past. There was no way the Other Olivia liked these things in these ways too, their sheer number made it statistically impossible.

When two pounds of glossy, candy-sweet Rainer cherries appeared on my desk late one afternoon, I carried them into the lab and held them up, "Peter, it's November!"

He was encased in the shoulder-length gloves attached to the vacuum-sealed evidence box picking at something yellow and wet. He shrugged, but didn't take his attention from the specimen, "It's July somewhere."

I just stood there, waiting for his full attention. He frowned at the sample before glancing in my direction. Then he rolled his eyes and dropped the sample, shrugging out of the gloves.

"Don't eat them, then. Leave them for Walter if you don't want them." He fumbled under one of the tables and came up with a dropper of blue liquid and turned his back on me, dismissing me as soundly as if he'd left the room.

"Thank you," I managed to mumble, my gratitude sweeping out from a tender part of me I'd have bet money didn't exist anymore. That it had been wiped away, along with my identity and memories when I was trapped on the Other Side.

Peter froze halfway back into the gloves and the sample. Back taut, he stood there but he didn't turn to look at me. "You're welcome," he said quietly, and his voice hitched with some emotion I couldn't identify.

I arrived at the field office a little after six, just as light began poking out from behind downtown's skyscrapers. In the basement gym, half of the HRT recruits were there milling around, although they all backed away from me discretely when I approached.

I whipped my sweatshirt over my head, exposing the tank underneath, in preparation for the day's first spar.

A young man was circling me, knees bent, fists ready to strike. His grey-blue eyes, far too near Peter's color for my comfort, were wary and pensive with concentration.

I'd only had time to dodge a few of the agent's jabs when Broyles' voice cut across the quiet murmuring of the other agents."Dunham!"

I backed to the edge of the mat, nodded at the AIC, and jogged lightly over to where Broyles was standing in the door to the gym.

"One of the returned children is remembering. Nightmares. Last couple of nights." Broyles didn't waste any time, or comment on my presence sparring with HRT.

"Where?" I tugged my sweatshirt back over my head.

"Wellesley."

Shit. In morning traffic even with the reverse commute that was almost an hour away. And that was if I didn't shower or pick up Peter and I needed to do both.

"Text me the address. I'll leave in ten minutes." Broyles had already opened his phone. "Could you call Peter too? Tell him I'll pick him up in thirty."

Peter and I were headed West on I-90 just as light well and truly took hold. It was a little before eight when we pulled up in front of an enormous white colonial with impeccable landscaping. Even the snow drifts looked prosperous out here.

The door opened and a Latina led us into a room where a petite blond was sitting sipping coffee.

She didn't look at us when we entered the room. Broyles called her so she was expecting us. "Andrew has gone to school," she said in the surgically precise speech of the New England elite.

Mrs. Griffith? I'm Agent Dunham with the FBI, and this is—" She had barely looked at us when we came in the room, but when she did deign to glance at us, she blinked in shock.

"Simon!"

I blinked. _Simon_?

Peter shuffled from one foot to the other next to me. "Hello Eleanor."

The woman practically jumped out of her chair and threw herself at Peter.

Peter's arms tightened around her, although more out of instinct I could tell than affection. The top of the woman's head didn't even clear Peter's shoulder and she was babbling into his lower sternum. " . . . so scared. I didn't know what happened to you. . . . just disappeared." She pulled back to look at him, but didn't take her arms from around Peter's neck or wiggle away from his embrace. "What _did_ happen to you?"

"Um, Ellie, that's a story for another time. Uh, I'm with the FBI now." Peter gestured toward the badge I had started to pull out before the surprise had stopped me. "We are here about Andrew's abduction."

The woman shuddered and put her head back into his chest. Peter looked at me beseechingly over her head.

I didn't know all the details, but I could guess at their relationship. This woman was obviously from Peter's past, possibly a mark, and whether it was genuine remorse, or just having his past revealed to me so openly, his conscience was itching him.

I quirked one eyebrow at Peter before cupping the woman's elbow, gently separating them to make her face me.

"Mrs. Griffith, um . . . _Simon,_" only Peter could have heard the emphasis I put on the name, "is a consultant with the Department of Homeland Security and for reasons of National Security we cannot reveal the nature of his association with us. Suffice it to say, he is here as a liaison to the FBI, investigating your son's kidnapping."

She nodded and I felt a grudging respect for her focus. "Of course." She backed away from Peter and gestured to the coffee pot sitting on a nearby cart.

Once ensconced on her hard backed couch, sipping from coffee from china cups so fine they were practically translucent, Eleanor related her son's nightmares the night before. With an attention to detail I was beginning to appreciate, she reached for a notebook on the table next to her chair and balanced it on her knees.

"I wrote everything down as soon as I could, so that I wouldn't forget anything. I just can't help but keep thinking about those other kids." She crossed her arms in front of her, rubbing her upper arms with her opposite hands.

She glanced furtively at me, then at Peter. "Um, do you want to read this yourself, or . . . "

Peter turned to look at me, subtly acknowledging my authority.

"If it's okay, we'd like to take that with us." I tried to smile at her, but she was still looking at Peter. I gave up. "Maybe you could just tell us what happened in your own words."

Eleanor nodded tightly. "Andrew always sleeps well." She smiled fondly, "Even as a baby he slept well."

Wordlessly, she refilled Peter's half-empty coffee.

Last night, he seemed . . ." She wrinkled her nose, " . . . out of sorts. Grouchy, temperamental. And he never is."

"How has he been since he was returned?" I asked.

"Fine," she replied.

She set her coffee cup down. "Not exactly," she amended. "Andrew has always been even-tempered and easy-going. Since he's been back, he seems to be . . . stressed. I tried to question him, but he always said he didn't remember, didn't know anything. He knows about the other children, so if he knew anything he'd tell me."

Eleanor jammed her hands under her thighs at the edge of her seat and leaned over the table towards us. "He went to bed like normal last night. Then, at midnight, right after I had just turned out my own light, Andrew was suddenly standing in my doorway. He was crying, just quietly crying. And he said, 'They are somewhere else, Mom. Somewhere not here.' I asked him how he knew that and he said they were all wearing masks to help them breathe and that they rode in a giant air balloon."

"What was he like when he was saying these things?" Peter asked quietly. "Was he upset?"

Eleanor was visibly shaken and she drew in a deep breath. "No. After the first bit, he was done crying. He was talking like he was telling a story. Someone else's story—not his own." She shook her head. "Since nothing he was saying made sense, I just tried to get more details from him in the hopes it would help."

She tore out several pieces from her notebook and handed them to me. "I wrote down what I could. Maybe something there will make sense to you."

Then Eleanor looked me directly in the eye. "Agent Dunham, what is going on here? Was ? . . . I mean . . . I can't believe I'm going to say this." She looked up at the ceiling. "Was my son abducted by aliens?"

I reached out to touch the edges of her hands which rested on her knee and she gave a little laugh. "That sounds just as crazy out loud as it did in my head, I'm afraid."

"I don't think so Mrs. Griffith." I said as gently as I could. "We can't discuss an ongoing investigation, you understand," people rarely understood, but I said it anyway, "know, however, that the children's abduction—your son's abduction—was carried out by someone very much from Earth."

She nodded and rose. "I will let you know if anything else happens."

"Of course. Thank you Mrs. Griffith. You have already been very helpful."

The door closed behind us after Eleanor had given Peter one last furtive hug and her phone number, begging him to call so they could catch up.

We walked back to the car in silence. We were exiting onto I-90 again, several miles outside of Wellesley when Peter finally spoke, "I knew her almost 7 years ago."

"Simon Peter," I replied. "Like the apostle. Cute."

"I told you, keep it close to the truth. Or at least something you can remember."

"Uh, huh," I said. "Was she the mark?"

"No." Peter looked out the window. " Her sister. And Eva was a Grifter of the first order. Bigger . . . than I ever was."

"Listen, _Simon_," I said. Peter groaned. "It's not group therapy. You don't have to share."

"'Reasons of National Security?'" Peter mocked. "Seriously?"

I grinned at him sideways. What the hell was going on? We were barely speaking weren't we? Now we were teasing each other like twelve year-olds left to our own devices with a bottle of Boone's.

Peter smiled cautiously. Then the smile faded and he took a deep breath, "Seven years ago their father hired me to keep Eva and her lover from stealing his fortune. But Eleanor was always there too. And I think she always knew there was something not right about me. Ellie was the smart one—miles smarter than she looked."

Peter turned to face me. "Eva deserved what she got, but Ellie," he broke off. "I tried to fix it as best I could, you know? I figured if she just never knew, it would be better . . ." Then he shook his head and grimaced. "Better for me, I suppose."

"Were you supposed to make Eva fall for you?"

Peter exhaled sharply. "God, no! I didn't work like that." He shook his head. "Never had the stomach for that. I appealed to her greed."

Interesting. Even as a confidence man, Peter had a conscience. "But Eleanor did?"

"Huh?" Peter asked.

"Fall for you?"

Peter shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe. I hope not."

Just as we got into the outskirts of Boston, the horizon shimmered and I had another memory that wasn't mine.

I was in the car, but it was stopped. Charlie was sitting next to me talking to someone else on his earpiece.

There was a great deal of smoke and noise, and I was more terrified than I could remember ever being. Agents were running around on this side of the highway, where traffic seemed to have disappeared. The other side of the highway headed out of town, traffic was stopped, bumper to bumper.

Charlie looked at me and I sucked in my breath when I saw the scar on his face. He raised his eyebrows at me but then turned to reach in the backseat. He pulled out a weapon and handed it to me then turned to retrieve one for himself.

He nodded at me. "Just like falling off a bicycle, right Liv?"

He turned to open his door and I did the same. Then we both got out of the car.

I jogged behind him, still looking around for clues as to where, or when, I was. Charlie stopped at a group of agents conferring in low tones a short distance from the car we'd just exited. One of the agents gestured behind him in the direction of the city skyline.

I caught my breath and watched as the amber expanded upwards to engulf the entire city. The amber grew and grew, consuming everything in its path, cracking and popping when it hardened until the entire city was swallowed in an amber bubble.

"Olivia!" Someone was calling me from far away. When I turned to follow the sound of the voice, it got a little closer, but more urgent, "Olivia!"

I turned and headed back in the direction of the car, then the horizon shimmered again and Peter's anxious face was only a few centimeters away from mine.

"Olivia! Can you hear me?" I blinked and slid back and away from him a bit so I could focus on his face.

"Peter?" I was still sitting in the driver's seat. Mercifully, the car had stopped moving. We were pulled over on the median, the car still running, hazard lights a ticking blink on the dash.

"What the hell just happened? And don't tell me you are fine."

"Peter," his face swam in front of me, "—Umm—"

"What just happened to you? You just drove to the side of the road—nearly killing us—and then just sat there."

"I think I just crossed over."

"What!" Peter backed away from me almost comically fast, flattened himself against the passenger seat door, and fixed me with a glare.

Fear and anger suffused his face in equal parts. "What did you eat yesterday for lunch?" he demanded.

I nodded once to show him that I understood. Then I had to stop and think because I was suddenly overwhelmed with thoughts and sensations of Chicken Chow Mein from the campus carryout closest to the lab.

"I had the peanut butter and pickle sandwiches Walter brought from home. And an apple." Peter relaxed a little.

"But you are thinking about Chinese carry-out in an attempt to trip me up." That earned me a small, relieved smile.

"Maybe I should get "Thing 1" tattooed on my forehead and be done with it."

"How about Prime?" Peter teased. Then, his smile vanished and he asked, "Olivia, if you just crossed over, why were you here the entire time?"

Good point. The steering wheel felt solid where I gripped it. It must have been just a memory—not mine of course, but it sure didn't feel like it. I glanced at him from the side of my eyes and shook my head as I put the car in gear, "Fuck if I know."

* * *

><p>Back at the lab Walter was MIA, having been taken away to the Federal Building's lab to oversee the transfer of some evidence. I recounted mine and Olivia's morning's pursuits to Astrid, minus her sudden trip to Neverland, mostly because I really wouldn't have know <em>what<em> to say about that.

Astrid nodded at appropriate intervals, but never took her eyes off the computer screen in front of her. Astrid was like that. Diminutive and so downright adorable you miss the fact that _she_ missed nothing. And she could kick my ass with one miniature hand tied behind her back. Which was hot.

I sighed and handed her Ellie's note about her son's disappearance. "Ellie gave us this," I said, "she took notes as soon as she could after he son told her where he'd been."

Astrid deigned to take her eyes from the monitor to raise one perfectly arched eyebrow at me, "Ellie?"

"Uh, it's a long story."

"_Ellie_ is an old _friend_ of Peter's" Olivia called from behind the half-shut door of the office where she was bent over logging onto her computer.

Olivia emphasized the important words so Astrid wouldn't miss them. "Apparently, not that long." I blinked at Astrid and gave her my best blank face.

She didn't take her eyes off of me, watching my face carefully. "Uh-huh," she said, nodding sagely.

I'd been wandering the world for close to a decade, relying on little more than my wits and what I considered a highly evolved poker face. Of all the people on the entire planet, I get partnered with two women who managed to read my face as easily as a billboard with only half the effort.

One of whom could read my mind if she'd bothered. But she rarely did since all my truths seemed to be right there, written across my face.

I sighed petulantly. My lungs felt constricted, like there was too little air in the room. There were too many people in here, with too many problems, who, if I were honest with myself, I cared too much about.

I had to get out of here. I glanced at my watch. Not quite 10.00.

I reached for my coat and told no one in particular. "I'm going out for a while."

No one answered.

* * *

><p>"Walter?" the lab's door swung outwards and slammed into the wall behind it. I scanned the room, but saw no signs of life.<p>

Peter hared off somewhere he chose not to share earlier that morning. I had no idea where. Without thinking, I reached out to locate him. When I felt him prickle along the back of my skull instantly, I knew he hadn't left the area, but he wasn't here now. Astrid and Shannon were traveling for Thanksgiving, so Astrid was taking next week's three work days off. Today she had come in and gone home early to start the weekend. Broyles had just told me over the phone that Walter was escorted back to the lab earlier that afternoon.

I climbed down the stairs, still scanning the room looking for Walter. If I was lucky he was here. If the gods smiled on me today, he would be alone.

"Walter?" I called a little more loudly. Walter had a tendency to retreat into his own world.

A clatter and some mumbling stage left suggested that Walter was here somewhere.

"WALTER?"

Walter's head popped out from behind the doorway of the lab's storage room. "Oh. Olivia, dear. It's you." He shuffled out into the main room, carrying a battered file box. "I was just reviewing my notes from when Belly and I tried to—"

"Walter," I interrupted, "I need your help."

"Why, yes, of course." He set the file box down in the middle of the doorway to the storage room, stepping carefully over it.

"I . . . ," now that I was here with Walter's pale eyes staring into mine I didn't know how to start. I felt dizzy and weak.

I was as unstable as an exposed nuclear reactor. I couldn't even think about telling Walter what was happening without shaking and sweating like I was infected with the hantavirus.

"Olivia," Walter mind snapped back to this world so obviously I almost heard it click. "What is it my dear?" Concern overlaid his superior-scientist voice and his eyebrows were drawn together in one long, hairy line.

"Walter." I struggled to pull myself together, glancing around at the lab equipment like maybe they could help me. "I've been seeing things."

Walter's eyebrow(s) rose quizzically. "You are seeing Agent Scott's memories again?" Walter was talking mostly to himself. "But that doesn't make any sense. It has been quite a long time, and Agent Scott has been—"

"No, Walter. Not John's." And I felt an inexplicable sadness for the old days, when what worried me most was ridding my mind of the consciousness of my traitorous dead lover.

If only.

I decided that this was information that I _needed_ to tell Walter, no matter how much it cost me in terms of personal privacy. I had to tell him as much as I could stand.

Walter just stared at me. Waiting for me to go on. "Not John's memories," I repeated, "Hers."

Walter squinted an eye at me. "Hers?" he repeated.

"The other Olivia."

"Oh."

I waited, but for once, Walter didn't seem to have anything to say.

"Also, I keep crossing over."

That got his attention. "More than once?"

"A lot more than once," I confirmed.

I remembered Peter saying I hadn't left the car. "I think," I amended, "sometimes it's hard to tell."

For a moment, Walter looked like someone had snatched his favorite snack from him en route to his mouth, before the unmitigated pity surged over his face. It was almost more than I could take.

"Olivia. I'm sorry." He looked down at his hand. "I'm sorry we didn't know."

I wasn't sure which thing he was sorry for that he didn't know. Didn't matter. I needed to move on before my voice disappeared altogether. "I know Walter. Can we fix this?"

"What do you mean?"

"I need to control this Walter. Just this morning, on the way back from questioning a witness, driving along the I-90 I crossed over and . . ."

Walter was scrambling for his notebook. Fluttering pages, testing and discarding pens that didn't work. Did you have an accident?"

A little startled to see all traces of compassion wiped from his face as he instantly transformed into the dispassionate scientist, I stuttered, "Umm. No. That is. I'm not sure. No." I finally managed firmly. "No. I don't think so. Just came back on the side of the road."

"What did you see?"

I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself. Then I gave up and just shoved my shaking hands into the pockets of my jacket. "Charlie. On the day of the Boston Fringe Event. I was in the same place as I was in the car. . . roughly. The outskirts of the city on the freeway. And I . . . I think I might have been new—as a Fringe Agent. I'm not clear on the timeline—I can't seem to access and identify all the memories when I want to. That's the problem."

Well, one of them anyway. I had a number of problems at the moment. Walter was scribbling furiously in his notebook. I waited for him to stop before continuing.

"There were people. Trying to exit the city—all bunched up on both sides of the road. Except for the lane we were in, which was blocked off. I was, um, pretty terrified. Charlie and I were in the car. Then we were running towards the other agents, and the amber was growing, right up from the center of the city—," I broke off, unable to continue.

But he had to know the most important part. I leaned against the lab bench and drew a choking breath. "Walter, when I was over there, they made me think I was her—"

"How?" Walter was still writing rapidly. He didn't look at me. Somehow, that made it easier.

"I don't know, really. First, they just tried to persuade me. I know that. I was locked in a room with a shrink who tried to convince me I was her for days. Then the tests started. I think they injected me with something to make me think I was her.

"Walter, I can't get rid of her," I whispered. I looked around for somewhere to sit since my legs didn't feel like they could hold me anymore. "I— . . . I don't think I can do this." A nightmare mosaic of memories, crashed through me. My dreams and hers. Charlie there, with his jagged scar and his guarded tone. Charlie here, but dead, and I didn't know. Peter already in the machine, a vicious gleam in his eyes. A dead city, frozen in amber. My mother, alive. The feel of her arms around me. Ella. Not Ella.

The torment of captivity and endless tests.

Without even knowing what I was doing I reached out to touch Walter's sleeve. I needed something to fasten me to this place, to save me from the unpredictable Tilt-A-Whirl of my crowded consciousness. The incandescent haze of her and me. Both of us. Impossible to tell which one was me.

If I ever _was_ me.

Maybe I always was her. Maybe there was only one universe. And I was crazy—the tricks of my own schizophrenic mind making me believe I was an FBI agent from another world. My mother's arms waiting to enfold me in the midst of my insanity.

The edges of Walter's lab blurred and shimmered. "Not now," I think I moaned as I struggled to stay upright.

Fatigue swamped me. A bone-deep weariness that I couldn't fight. Walter stopped scribbling in his book. "Olivia—"

My legs folded like they were made of Tinkertoys. I felt the concrete floor slam into my elbow and hip.

Then blackness overcame me.

######

Some amount of unknown time later I came to stretched along the couch in the yellow light of the lab's office.

"Hello dear." Walter was sitting at my desk nibbling on Cheez-its.

"What happened?"

"I believe you fainted. Have you eaten today Olivia?"

"How did I get here?"

Walter just shrugged and popped another cracker into his mouth. "You couldn't weigh much more than 50 kilos dear." He chewed, squinting into the bottom of the Cheez-its box. "And I'm not so decrepit as you imagine. I carried you."

"Did I cross over?" I sat up carefully on the couch.

"I don't know." He put the box down and turned to face me. "Did you?"

"I don't think so. At least, I don't remember it."

Walter's face was openly paternal. "Olivia, why didn't you tell me? You've been back over three weeks."

I didn't know. Frightening though it was, Walter was the closest thing to a father I'd ever known. If I couldn't tell him, who else would I tell?

I pulled down my runched up blouse. My jacket was draped at the end of the couch. "I thought I could handle it. I thought it would fade. Like John did."

Walter's Sybil-esque face transformed into the unrelenting scientist's again. "Olivia, I can only help you if you tell me everything," he said. Walter looked at me sternly and I nodded.

So I told him. As much as I could remember. Or make sense of. The time Over There, thinking I was her. Frank's kindness. How Charlie was alive. My mother alive and Rachel dead. How, since I've been back I felt demolished, fragmented like the far-flung pieces of colored glass in a church window, smashed and reassembled into a whole new image.

I even told him about Peter appearing to me over there. How he worked to convince me I wasn't her.

Walter just sat there, nibbling Cheez-its, nodding occasionally, jamming the box between his thighs so he could scribble notes.

"I'll need help with this, Olivia."

Oh no. I looked at Walter silently begging. He only shook his head back at me. "I won't keep any more secrets from Peter, Olivia." He rolled up the cellophane and folded the Cheez-its box closed. "None that I know of, anyway." He stood and put his lined hand on my shoulder.

"And you shouldn't either," he said so quietly I almost didn't hear him, even though the lab around us was dark and silent.

Walter left the office, headed back to the storage room, probably to find the files he would need to tear open my brain.

From the hollow darkness of the lab Walter called, "We can start tomorrow."

* * *

><p>I found her in one of her favorite hideouts: a bar on the unfriendly edge of Sommerville. It was a One-Vinyl-Padded-Door-No-Windows kind of establishment where she went when she wanted to be alone with a host of other solitary drinkers.<p>

The bar was already filling up and it wasn't even 4 o'clock. Maybe everyone was kicking off the Thanksgiving week early. Olivia sat at the end of the bar, coat still on, one unbuttoned side snaked around her holster, tipping back a shot of the inevitable whiskey. A beer bottle sat next to her on the bar top.

She was the only woman in the place. She'd prominently displayed her weapon, probably to fend off the inevitable come-ons, making it clear to the flannel-clad, workbooted patrons she wasn't there for the company. Even though the bar was half-full, there was a two-chair force-field around her.

She set the shot glass back down and pushed it toward the back of the pitted bar then tapped her first two fingers at the barkeep who was lazily filling the ice well and watching hockey scores on the elderly wood-paneled TV at the end of the bar.

Her elbows were propped on the bar. She knew I was here, I could tell by the hunched tenseness of her shoulders, the way she pointedly didn't look in my direction.

She'd known I'd follow her after Walter filled me in. By now, it was practically my MO.

Just like fleeing to drink alone was hers.

I walked down to her end of the bar and slid into the seat next to her. There was nothing else to look at in the place, so the customers' eyes followed me, waiting for me to strike out.

The bartender slid a generous two fingers of whiskey in front of Olivia and raised his eyebrows at me. I pointed to her beer and her whiskey and he reached into the cooler behind the bar for a beer which he put in front of me and shuffled off to get my whiskey.

It was not a talking kind of place. After the bartender returned with my whiskey, we sat there silently looking at the double row of top-shelf liquor gathering dust on the mirrored wall behind the bar.

Olivia tossed back her shot and I took a small sip. I wasn't sure what was going to happen, but my need for clear-headedness outweighed my need to show solidarity by pounding back double shots at Olivia's tempo-allegro.

Besides, someone was going to have to drive Olivia's massive FBI-issue SUV back to the Federal Building and then navigate us home. I didn't want a DUI added to the potpourri of commendations and decorations in her personnel file.

I let a full fifteen minutes pass before I said anything. She would expect me to blaze in at her beleaguered and indignant. I was going to try to surprise her.

So I tried to open with the most benign thing I could think of. Something she was bound to already know. "I talked to Walter," I said without moving my eyes from the spot on the back of the bar I was staring at.

Olivia didn't say anything. She just stoked the rim of her rocks glass with her thumb and forefinger. I counted to a hundred and then asked, "Do you have anything you want to share with the rest of the class?" hoping that my tone showed I wasn't being snarky.

She motioned the bartender for another drink and slid her empty glass to the back of the bar. "Are you going to help?" she asked.

"Olivia—," I started. But then found I didn't quite know what to say. It felt so familiar. Her rushing off into yet another half-assed mess. Me unsuccessfully averting her. We were both inhabiting our self-appointed roles and they felt as comfortable as a pair of worn slippers. The fact was, I'd sooner eat ground glass than help Walter inject her with more Cortexiphan, or sink her back in the Tank, or whatever other Faustian nightmare Walter planned to help her get control of her abilities.

_Abilities_.

What a fucking joke.

The bartender came back carrying the bottle of Bushmills. He silently filled Olivia's glass and set the bottle down next to it. Evidently it was easier just to let us keep count.

Walter told me, with total ingenuousness, that he learned it wasn't just the Faux's Vagenda (best new word, ever) that was bothering Olivia. Evidently, Walter has just joined the rest of us. As if, Walter had imagined that at this point my sleeping with someone else would even register on Olivia's scale of Very Bad Things.

Walter described how his doppelganger had taken advantage of Olivia's skills as an empath by convincing her that she was the Faux. Olivia had been living, Walter explained, as the Faux Over There all the weeks she was gone. And now that she was back, Olivia was struggling with the infusion of the Faux's consciousness into her head. As it turned out, this problem was pushing Olivia to the edge of sanity.

Olivia's abilities already made her more capable of crossing over with relative ease. On top of that, the burden of managing both sets of consciousnesses made it impossible to single out her own identity from the hue and cry of all the others who set up housekeeping in her mind. All of this was making it difficult to locate herself in both time and space. So when she crossed over, she crossed dimensions and moved through time as well.

Now it all made sense. If Olivia was crossing not only space, but space and time regularly like she had this morning without willing it, _and_ she was regularly experiencing the Faux's memories and dreams, _and_ she was still unwillingly riding the vertiginous carousal of my own mind, it was no wonder she was as unstable as if she'd been drinking the mercury-blood of the shapeshifters for months.

Shit.

I planned to tell her that there was no way I would be a party to this. That she'd have to find another way. Instead, I said, "Olivia, you don't have to do this."

She gave an unladylike half-laugh, half-snort then drank her shot, chasing it with a swig of beer. I risked touching her by reaching out and putting my hand on top of hers sitting next to the beer. Even her fingers were thinner, her skin as fragile and translucent as rice paper.

She stilled, but didn't pull her hand away. When she turned to look at me the dark bar and the whiskey made her pupils wide, leaving only a thin sliver of green rimming their edges. "We both know I have to do this Peter." She looked away, but turned her hand so it was palm up under mine.

Her voice was rougher even than her normal honey-on-sandpaper rasp. "Are you going to help Walter?" she asked, "He says he won't do it without you."

I looked away. If I helped Walter and she died from any number of dangerous things or disappeared into the ether of The Other Side I'd never forgive myself. If I didn't help her she very well might blow someone up. Or go insane. Or throw herself in front of a bus just to get a little surcease.

On the other hand, just as easily, the fabric of both universes might abruptly unravel tomorrow and we'd all die anyway.

I sighed. "What do you think I should do?" I was genuinely interested in what she would say.

Olivia usually only answers direct questions about her needs when projectiles actively threaten the lives of everyone in the vicinity.

She gripped my fingers and leaned closer to me. "Help him," she said. She looked back at me and her voice was desperate, "Help me control this."

The raw honesty of her answer made me nod at her before I even realized what I was doing. I'd have followed her off the edge of a cliff if she continued to look at me with her eyes a naked combination of misery and conviction.

I peeled off three twenties from my pocket and laid them on the bar. I'd stopped counting the drinks, but I figured that would cover it since Olivia was still more or less upright. "C'mon, Miss Loaded 2010," I said, giving her my most endearing smirk, "The drunk bus is leaving."

Color me astonished, but for once Olivia did what I told her to. She slid off the barstool and onto her feet, glancing down to fasten one button on her coat. She leaned into me slightly so that her lips were shiveringly close to my ear. "Where we going?" she asked, with the precise locution of the well and truly drunk.

"Home," I evaded.

She just smiled.

I grabbed her elbow, leading her toward the door. Shockingly, Olivia not only let me guide her, but she leaned closer into me, forcing me to wrap my arm around her waist as we passed through the narrow door side-by-side.

Outside, I held my hands out for the keys to her car. She dug in her pocket, put them into my hand, then rested her head onto my shoulder as we walked the two blocks to her car.

If the universe had exploded and burned out in a fiery burst then and there I would have died a happy man.

Olivia had got on-street parking in this neighborhood on a Friday afternoon, a universe-ending mystery in itself. I clicked the car's remote lock and guided Olivia to the passenger door. She turned to face me just as I reached around her to open the door.

With my hand still on the car door handle I looked down the few inches in height that separated us and wished I hadn't. Olivia's face was so senselessly affectionate it bewildered me and I halted.

Even before she got trapped on the other side, Olivia only seemed to barely tolerate me; tenderness was something I'd never expected or received from her before.

Stunned by the mossy undergrowth in her eyes, I didn't see her hand snaking around my neck, I only felt her tug me down gently until her mouth settled under mine.

Her mouth moved slowly, like she'd just formed her hypothesis and was in the initial testing phase of the experiment.

I knew it was the combination of anguish and alcohol, so I did my level best to control myself, really I did.

But I'm hardly on Benedict's list to be canonized, and after the disaster of recent events, it had been months since I'd touched her—really touched my Olivia. And my last two functioning brain cells assured me Olivia had never looked at or touched me like this, like I might be something other than merely agreeable and/or convenient.

While her mouth continued its assessment, I reached out under the flaps of her coat to smooth the curve between her waist and hips. When she raised up on her toes and wrapped her arms more tightly around me, I stepped forward and backed her into the passenger door, nudging her legs apart so I could seal myself along her lean length.

Of their own volition, my fingertips reached up to stroke the curved underside of her breast and she arched up into my hands, opening her mouth wider. Her tongue was cool and tasted of whiskey, the bar, and something that was indefinably Olivia.

This was getting out of control faster and uglier than an Olympic luge run. This was a Very Bad Idea. I wanted her more than I wanted air, but taking an inebriated Olivia to bed was hardly the way to cultivate trust.

Shaking like I was wired to car battery, I pulled back from her. She just stood there with her hands still curved around the edges of my shoulders, smiling her La Gioconda half-smile at me.

I swallowed hard, suppressing a groan. I tried to regulate my breathing, but found it difficult since there was barely enough blood left in my brain to control involuntary responses. I reached behind her again and managed to crack open the passenger door with one hand and steer her uncharacteristically pliable body into the seat with the other

I slammed the door, taking several deep breaths as I slowly circled around the back of the car before getting in.

No way I was taking her back to her apartment. My little head and my big head were having a serious disagreement, and faced with Olivia's obvious willingness, I didn't trust myself to go home afterwards. Our house was closer, and while Walter's chaperonage was unlikely to satisfy Miss Manners, his presence would at least ensure that Olivia and I slept separately.

We didn't say anything on the way home. Olivia's head lolled back onto the headrest and she dozed. When we got to my house, she just took my hand when I offered it and climbed out of the car. She also didn't protest when I steered her up to my room and pushed her down on my bed.

I removed her shoes, jacket, shirt and trousers. Olivia had dozed off again and I indulged myself in a glimpse of her laying there in her bra, panties, and tank. She was downright bony, sharp points angling out in places they'd never been before: her collarbones, her hipbones, her wrists. Olivia is the poster child of neglecting her own needs, it's true, but this gauntness exposed a greater demon than simple self-neglect. I wondered what Walternate had done to make her think she was someone else. Whatever it was, I knew it was deeply loathsome; so unspeakable it toppled even Olivia's considerable resolve.

I yanked the plug on the mental image of the Faux's shapely curves stretched out across this very bed. I'll say one thing, the Faux ate well while she was here. Walter and I cooked up a goddamned storm to feed that malignant bitch. Meanwhile Olivia languished in Walternate's prison.

I was really beginning to hate my biological father. If things kept up this way, I was going to eclipse Luke Skywalker and become the frontrunner of the Most Loathsome Father contest.

If nothing else, I could justify my participation in Walter's new experiments as a way to tend Olivia more carefully. At least if I was the one injecting her with Walter's handcrafted pharmaceuticals and affixing electricity to her brain stem I'd have cause to openly supervise the follow-up care.

Yeah, and the check is in the mail, it's only a cold sore, and of course I'll respect you in the morning. I sighed. Untwisting the blankets rumpled at the bottom of the bed, I covered her and backed out of the room, closing the door behind me.

I gathered blankets from the hall closet then headed downstairs. Sprawled out on the couch I thought I'd never sleep, but only minutes later I closed my eyes and let sleep's oblivion take me.


	4. Chapter 4

**Sum over Histories  
><strong>by MVariorum

* * *

><p><strong>Summary<strong>: Olivia comes back. Olivia and Peter save the world. Again.  
><strong>Categories<strong>: Romance; Adventure; Smut  
><strong>Pairings<strong>: Peter/Olivia  
><strong>Rating<strong>: M; So kiddies, the faint of heart, and those with refined taste should scoot along elsewhere. You have been warned.  
><strong>Story Notes<strong>: Please accept my preemptive apologies for the pseudo-pseudoscience. Not a scientist. Sadly, I'm not even a pseudoscientist. Never will be.  
><strong>Disclaimer<strong>: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.  
><strong>Chapters<strong>: ?  
><strong>Completed<strong>: No  
><strong>Spoilers<strong>: AU after early season 3 (more or less around _Do Shapeshifters Dream of Electric Sheep?). _Includes some elements of the early part of Season 3, but no spoilers beyond that.

* * *

><p><strong>AN**: For those of you who are here for the smut, please know that it's coming. I really thought the smut was in this chapter, but it turns out it's in the next chapter. It's just taken me longer to tell the story I wanted to tell than I originally planned. The story is still M, for language, and just general darkness.

Thank you to all who read, alerted, and added the story to their favorites. A big warm hug to those who reviewed—reviews make me happy.

A big shout-out to my beta starg8fans, who makes things . . . well, just _better_!

**Chapter 4**

I woke up dazzled by the cracks of light filtering in between the panels of Peter's second-hand curtains. He had gotten them at a closeout for hotel furniture, their burgundy depths decorated improbably with golden lambs and leaping deer. In spite of the bizarre pattern, they did a fantastic job of blocking light. If light was peeping through their heavily lined backs it must be really late.

I glanced at the clock. Seven-thirty.

Had I slept all night?

I can't remember the last time I did that. It had been months. Definitely before we went to the Other Side.

Flipping over so my back was to the window, I indulged myself in just a few moments of rolling around in the Peter-scented bedclothes. This bed belonged to him, so it was all right to enjoy the sensation.

For once, I seemed to have awakened knowing who, when, and where I was. That too was a rare occurrence. Usually I woke in a panic, uncertain of my identity or locale, having napped in whatever random horizontal space was available. It was worse when I slipped into deeper sleep. Then I woke sweaty with the sheets gnarled around my damp legs and torso, panting with fear or lust from a hideous dream.

How long had I slept? I wasn't sure, but I hazily remembered drinking myself stupid at the bar (a process which, regrettably, was harder and more time consuming these days) and kissing Peter on the curb at twilight.

It was barely dark last night when Peter drove me home and shoveled me into his bed.

Light fingers scratched the back of the door. "Olivia? Walter's making breakfast. Are you up?"

"Yeah. I'll be down in a minute."

"Can I come in?"

"Uh huh."

Peter's head and shoulders poked through the crack he made in the door. Even dressed in his running gear with his morning bed head he was absurdly attractive. Which is strange since he doesn't have one single feature that is particularly noteworthy. I think it has to do with him being extremely well-proportioned. Not too tall or too short. Lean hips, nice shoulders, trim but not overdeveloped muscles, the right size feet. I'd seen him pre-shower and shave plenty of times and it was criminal, really. No one should look that lickable first thing in the morning.

He waggled my sneakers up by his ear. "You wanna? I got your workout clothes from the duffle in the backseat of the car."

"Yeah. Sure."

Peter put a stack of clothes on top of the sneakers at the end of the bed. "We can have a run and then eat. After that, Walter says we can go to the lab and get started."

I nodded and smiled what I hoped looked like a normal smile, like it was everyday that I woke up in Peter's bed before letting Walter tear my consciousness apart in the lab.

I dressed quickly and met Peter downstairs. A ski cap now covered his bed head. He handed me one wordlessly, then we took off side by side into the frigid morning.

When we got back, most of my face was frozen and I was panting, but the house smelled like a homey mixture of fried bacon and coffee. I couldn't remember the last time I had eaten breakfast, but I actually felt the faint stirrings of hunger.

Peter and I stripped off our outer layers and went to the kitchen. The table was set with their mismatched, thrift-store dishes. A stack of buttered toast and a heaping plate of bacon sat in the middle. Peter poured coffee into two of their decorated mugs— he kept the Campbell's Soup mug and handed me the mug with "Virginia is for Lovers!" emblazoned across it. Walter scrambled eggs, his woolen-clad feet swishing over the kitchen's elderly linoleum as he moved to retrieve and fill each of our plates with eggs.

We ate quietly. After a while, Walter tut-tutted at my still-full plate, even though I had tucked away close to a whole egg, a piece of toast and two slices of bacon. It was more than I had eaten at one sitting in a long time.

"But you used to eat like a field hand, my dear," Walter protested.

Peter studied his plate like he was waiting for it to say something helpful and I said nothing. How was I supposed to respond to that anyway?

It wasn't as if I had a single fucking secret from these two anymore anyway. But I'd be damned if I was going to discuss it openly over breakfast.

Even with the painful reminders that I was only a ghost of the damaged person I used to be, the whole morning had a cozy, homey feel to it. Lazing in bed until the light drove me awake; Peter's quiet companionship as we pounded the concrete side by side; the smell of breakfast in their warm, dark-paneled entryway; Walter heaping my plate with steaming food. I felt like I had wandered into a Neil Simon play, albeit one revised by Harold Pinter.

We lingered over coffee as long as we possibly could. It was obvious we were all trying to put off the inevitable. Finally, Peter stood up, collecting the plate and stacking them in the sink. Walter scraped the crusted egg from the pan and I reluctantly gathered the coffee mugs.

"You shower first," Peter said.

I nodded and went up the stairs, wondering if what Walter was about to do to me would make it easier or harder to capture and hold myself as comfortably as I had been able to do that morning.

* * *

><p>"Walter, what the hell is <em>that<em>?" My voice was necessarily quiet as I watched Olivia's EEG trace, not the normal one, not two, but _three_ separate waves on the monitor.

"Oh, dear. I was afraid of that." Walter said, just as quietly.

Walter's reply was hardly enlightening. Or encouraging.

At the lab we had commenced Walter's plans with a minimum of fuss. Walter claimed that today was just a series of test to ascertain what they had done to Olivia to implant another set of memories. All the drugs administered today were legal—somewhere, at least. Olivia wasn't even in the Tank. Just sleeping on a gurney, the result of a large—but not absurdly so—dose of a garden-variety benzodiazepine.

"Walter is that—," I was afraid I knew what the multiple wave patterns meant, "is that what I think it is?"

It is a testament to my deeply disturbing lifestyle that multiple sets of EEG waves means not equipment malfunction, but multiple consciousnesses.

One of the wave patterns spiked, responding to my elevated heart rate. "That's you son," Walter said almost proudly, pointing to the top wave.

Fuck, fuck and triple fuck.

I looked back at the monitor, deciding with the ease of long practice to skip the part where what we were looking at couldn't happen. "Sweet mother of Christ, Walter. How is she even finishing a sentence, let alone functioning day-to-day?"

Walter just widened the inane smile still plastered on his face. "Let's find out which one is Olivia, shall we?" he said, lifting Olivia's arm up and away from her prone body laid out on the table.

The middle set of waves quavered.

I cradled my forehead in my linked hands. "Walter, how is this possible?" I asked. Even I could hear the fatigue in my voice.

"I'm not sure how they managed to override her identity and replace it with the other Olivia's perceptions and memories," Walter said. "I suspect that after they implanted those memories, however they did it, they injected Olivia with a compound that diminished her brain's ability to filter out the other consciousnesses. Without the a native ability to regulate those consciousnesses, Olivia would have been quite susceptible to whatever cognitive, social or behavioral suggestions presented to her."

"They made it so she couldn't tell which identity was hers," I summarized. My head began to ache. "So, when she met anyone over there, Charlie for example, she reacted to him based on how he reacted to her."

"Yes, exactly. They used both pharmaceuticals and socio-behavioral approaches to erase her identity. The approach is quite brilliant, really, since it uses the brain's normal functions against itself. If you simply input data into the brain, there is always the chance that it will be nullified by the dominant consciousness. If you make that brain incapable of recognizing its own identity, however—" Walter trailed off.

My headache sang a duet with an encroaching stomach pain.

Walter continued as he adjusted the input from the EEG machine. "We've known for a while she could hear you, Peter, but we've never been able to _see_ you before because Olivia's brain was capable of filtering you out. Belly and I predicted that this could be achieved—not in this way, of course—but we theorized that trained empaths could be used not just to overhear the minds of others, but, indeed to _become_ them if necessary."

"Walter, we have to fix this. She can't go on like this. It's a goddamned miracle she's held it together this long. What do we need to do to get it out? Them — Us— Whatever."

Walter just stared at me blankly. "C'mon Walter," I looked back at the multiple waves, "what do we need to do? You said it yourself, when this happened before with John, she can't exist with all these different memories in her."

Walter just kept staring at me, comprehension first, then sadness infusing his face. "It's not like with Agent Scott," he said quietly. "This is quite different than the synaptic transfer I used to allow her to access Agent Scott's memories."

"What do you mean?"

"Peter, you can't just 'get it out,' as you say. These memories are deeply embedded into her brain, to the point that they overwhelmed her own brain activity, which is why we can actually see multiple brain waves on the EEG." Walter looked down, fiddling needlessly with the IV drip chamber.

The tiny speck of imaginary control I believed I still had over my own destiny slipped from my fingers, as inevitable as the tide shrinking from its shoreline. "What does that mean Walter? What are we going to do."

"This may have been designed. Or it might simply be an unintentional side effect resulting from Olivia's abilities as an empath and a telekinetic." Walter shrugged. "These consciousness are a part of her now, Peter. We can't just remove them. Not without taking parts—necessary parts—from our Olivia with them." He gestured widely toward the monitors. "This _is_ Olivia now. You and the other Olivia. You are _in_ her now. It can't be taken back. We just have to figure out a way to train Olivia to manage all of you."

* * *

><p>When I came to, Walter and Peter were standing over me, but looking elsewhere. Peter's jaw was set, his arms crossed—never a good sign. Walter was reciting the Periodic Table in alphabetic order—a calming trick I'd seen him do when the shit was about to hit the fan.<p>

"That bad, huh?" I asked. My flimsy stab at humor didn't even seem to register.

Then, I sat there, calm as you please while Walter explained why I was on a non-stop trip on the Disoriented Express and then gave me a pep talk about the benefits of multiple personalities: Multiple Personalities: Making it Work for You! By the time he finished my head was aching and my muscles felt tired, like I had been clenching them for a long time. I only had one thing to say.

"I want to go home."

They drove me home in the Shaggin' Wagon, Walter riding shotgun while I rode in the back. Walter offered to let me stay with them, but I wasn't prepared to face the intimacy. I had enough people in my head without Walter and Peter anxiously watching my every move and listening to my every breath.

They dropped me off and it was with effort that I remembered to be polite and thank them for their help and for the ride. Walter handed me a lumpy envelope. "To help you sleep dear. What I am going to do to you is difficult. It will be easier for you if you can get some sleep."

Alone, for the first time in over 24 hours, I stared at my musty-smelling, unlived-in apartment. Undoubtedly, my life was circling the drain, but I was somewhat heartened by the fact that Walter felt like he could help me sort out some of my problems, literally.

In the meantime, I decided to help myself by facing the ragged edge of what was left of my life Here as best I could.

I donned the rubber gloves Rachel used when she came and cleaned for me. I emptied the contents of my refrigerator—all spoiled—then emptied the garbage. I scrubbed the toilet. I laundered my sheets and piled the rest of the overdue laundry for tomorrow. I logged on to Ann Taylor and bought myself two new suits in a size that would fit and paid the extra $30 to have them overnighted.

I went through my stack of mail and I wondered if the other Olivia had gotten a card from my fuckhead stepfather last month. I didn't see it in the stack of opened mail she helpfully left for me on the desk, and I didn't have the nerve to go rifling through the desk right now. She'd kept up with my bills while she was here. How very civil. Her signature looked subtly different than mine. I deposited my last two checks and paid the bills.

By the time all that was done it was early evening. I took a shower, swallowed one of Walter's capsules, and laid down in bed.

It was the last thing I remember. Whatever it was Walter gave me blanketed me with a deep and dreamless sleep.

####

The next two weeks flew by. Walter regularly ran a series of tests, each of which was more difficult and taxing, none of which seemed to be terribly effective in managing my multi-player roster. I still hopped universes and times without provocation. The only difference was that under controlled conditions I seemed to be able to stay with Walter when I slipped away and follow his voice back. Walter insisted this represented progress.

It didn't feel like progress to me, since I was the one constantly beset with two lives: two sets of failures and squandered opportunities, two sets of anxiety and hardship, but I was too tired to argue with Walter. On the plus side, Peter was getting easier to manage. He was always there, always an inner murmur, but he applied Herculean efforts to keep quiet when I was around, and together we gradually discovered ways to keep him separate with less energy.

I visited Rachel and Ella in Chicago over the long Thanksgiving weekend, but instead of relaxing me, my time with Rachel only made me feel sneaky and fraudulent. As usual, Rachel and Ella did most of the talking and it's not like me being evasive was new territory for Rachel. The other Olivia had visited them in October, a fact I learned from a few well-timed questions, and I wondered if Rachel had noticed any difference. At least Rachel could justify her inability to spot my imposter with her distance and ignorance of the other universe.

Walter and Peter hosted Thanksgiving dinner for our alternative family the first week of December, after everyone had returned from their travels. Walter cooked a turkey so big it barely fit in their cavernous McCarthy-era oven and Peter cooked the rest. Astrid brought Shannon, who I had never met.

Not, at least, that I remember.

Shannon was a geologist; a statuesque blond twice Astrid's size and every bit as placidly gorgeous. She had a buttery voice burred by an unidentifiable accent and an enviable knack for telling stories that elicited Peter's genuine smile. I liked her immediately.

When the turkey had been reduced to a carcass and the plates stacked aside we started drinking the obscure Japanese scotch Shannon brought from her recent trip overseas. The conversation and our inebriation mellowed in time with the dimming outdoor light.

Peter squinted at the bottle's label while pouring Shannon another measure. "Is that boy fucking that donkey?"

Shannon craned her head at the bottle. "That's not a donkey," she said. "That's a horse."

"I saw a woman have sex with a horse once," Walter said, the interaction between his current drug regimen and the alcohol making his voice sing-song. He moved from the table to sprawl out on the couch.

"Walter!" Peter said. But he didn't seem annoyed. If anything, he sounded amused.

"The internet is a violently indiscriminate medium," Walter returned. "Type in the word 'horse' and you get any number of returns. It's fascinating."

I held out my hand and Peter passed me the bottle. The image on the label did show a young man standing somewhat lewdly behind a horse with his hands resting on the horse's flanks. Steaming pots of what I guessed to be peat-stoked fires littered the rolling hills in the background.

"Does Japanese even have a peat?" Astrid slurred. She had given up any pretence of sobriety and her cheek rested against Shannon's outstretched arm on the table.

Shannon smiled and stroked Astrid's curls. "Maybe," she told her absently. She looked around pointedly at the table and wrinkled her perfect nose. "I'll send you a whole case of the donkey-fucking scotch if you don't make us stay and clean up this mess."

"I thought you said it was a horse." Peter already had his phone out calling them a cab. "Don't worry about it. Walter will need a project tomorrow." Walter didn't stir to defend himself. He was now stretched out on the couch, open-mouthed and breathing heavily.

After Astrid and Shannon rushed into the frosty night and into their cab, Peter coaxed Walter awake and shuffled him up to his room. He came back downstairs long enough to argue with me over who was going to sleep on the couch, before finally stomping off upstairs when I threatened to leave if he didn't shut the hell up and go to bed.

I wrapped myself in the scratchy crocheted afghan draped over the back of the couch and propped my head on the couch's armrest. With my stomach stuffed with turkey, and my brain pickled in Japanese scotch, I contentedly watched the streetlights chase each other across the carved ceiling tiles.

It was the last tolerable day I remember having for a very long while.

* * *

><p>I should have never got out of bed this morning.<p>

Since our Thanksgiving celebration over a week ago something had been wonky with the furnace. I'd tinkered with it in my free time, but when Walter's showering baritone forced me awake this morning I could still see my breath in my bedroom. When I got out of bed, I stubbed my toe on the knapsack I carelessly flung to the floor when I got home the other day. I slipped on a stray sock at the top of the stairs and almost broke my neck flailing down the first half of our hardwood stairs. Walter ate the last two slices of bread and we were out of milk. No breakfast.

When the filter slipped in the coffeemaker and grounds filled the carafe I'd brewed from our last four scoops of coffee, it was the last straw.

Too cold to shower, in too much pain to function, and pissed enough to teach a Clansman something about enmity I locked the front door and followed a chirping Walter down the stairs.

No one should be that fucking happy in the morning anyway. It was intolerable.

When Olivia came into the lab with the port-o-box of coffee, I wanted to kiss her. Well, more than I want to kiss her normally.

She dropped it on the counter, filled a cup, and handed it to me with an amused expression. "Oversleep?"

"With Walter in the house? Hell, no."

"Mmmm," she nodded, wrapping her hands around her own cup and sipping.

"I'm not supposed to be here today," I deadpanned. I wondered if she liked Kevin Smith movies. There were a lot of things about Olivia I wish I knew.

She raised her eyebrows pointedly at Walter as he fiddled with the magnetic probe soon to be jammed into her brain stem. "You'll have to take a number on that one."

Thirty minutes and two cups of coffee later, I was roused enough for the panic to set in. It knotted my stomach tightly around the rock that had grown there in the weeks that Olivia emerged as Walter's latest lab rat and made my neck muscles burn. My damp palms dropped three sets of electrodes in a row. By the time Walter was done mixing up the medicine and testing the Tank I was as anxious as a Baptist at a NARAL conference.

It didn't help that Olivia was stripped down to her bra and panties and I was the patsy put in charge of gluing all of Walter's tiny electrodes to the generously exposed areas of Olivia's fresh-cream skin.

I hated this. _Hated_ it.

This wasn't going to go well, I could feel it. Olivia was perched on the precipice as it was. Was it really wise to unleash her abilities with drugs, sending her god-knows-where, all in the academic interest of seeing if she could make her way home?

Not that wisdom was ever the driving force behind any of Walter and Olivia's plans. Olivia's rashness and Walter's hubris mixed about as innocently as matches and gasoline.

Kneeling down, I globbed some of the conductive gel on the electrode and suctioned it to the inside of her knee with a shaking hand.

Olivia's hand on my head stopped me and I looked up. Her eyes were serious. She looked at me like a math problem she hadn't yet figured out how to tackle.

Her hand moved through my uncombed hair. "You worry too much."

Her departure from her normal blasé attitude toward our activities terrified me more than the likelihood that she'd be lost—literally or figuratively—in the tank in the next few minutes.

"Olivia, this is crazy, even for us." Then, just as my panic fought for and won dominance over the anxiety, I felt a little ripple and an internal murmur. Then a slow stroking, like the smoothing of ruffled feathers from the inside out that quieted the panic and anxiety, mostly. Suddenly, I felt better. Not exactly cheerful, but better.

I just stared at her. I knew what that must have cost her—to openly show me, what she could do. "Exhibitionist," I grumbled, pretending to be annoyed to give her a little space and allow her an opportunity to ignore such intimacy.

She smiled. A small one, but a real one that made it all the way to her eyes. She knew what I was doing and appreciated it. Her hand slipped off my head, fingers brushing my scruffier-than-usual cheek on the way down. "It'll be fine. Just . . . just hold my hand, hmm? Then I won't get lost."

####

"Walter, call her back." Walter frowned at the computer monitor, but didn't move. The rock in my gut shifted a little.

The sloshing in the tank got louder. The fuzzy camera inside showed Olivia's face twisting with some unnamed, but unpleasant, emotion. At least she was still there.

"Walter," I said, louder this time, "call her back. It's been long enough."

"Wait, Peter. Just a moment. Let's see what happens next."

"No Walter—"

"Olivia," Walter said in his I-am-in-charge voice, "what do you see?"

No response.

"Peter, look." Walter pointed at the monitor. Olivia's heart rate was off the charts and her blood pressure was steadily climbing. Walter pointed at the other monitor. The one that showed us all crowded in her head like teenagers in a mosh pit.

Two of them were synching up. They were still separate, but following the same wave patterns.

Olivia was moaning now and thrashing around in the tank. I concentrated hard on mentally holding her hand.

"Olivia," Walter repeated, "You are right here." Olivia's twitching settled somewhat. I probably imagined it, but I thought I felt a furtive squeeze in my hand. "What do you see?"

Olivia mumbled. "Tell me again, Olivia. You are right here with me. What do you see?"

"Dark," Olivia said, loud enough to hear. "Dark, and— a door?"

"Good. Olivia, what else do you see?"

"Walter, I don't think—," I tried to keep my voice level.

"Peter," Walter cut me off, " why are we doing this for if not to find out what it is she can do? How far she can go?" He turned his back on me and adjusted the carvedilol drip. "She'll be fine in a minute."

Now I didn't bother to keep the iron out of my voice. "We just want to help her sort out all the consciousnesses. Get her to recognize her own. That's what we are doing. And we've done that now, so—"

"I've told you before, Peter," Walter interrupted me. "Stress is the only way to do this. Anxiety, or fear in particular for Olivia, will increase the likelihood that she can access and control her abilities."

"There's a door." Olivia repeated, interrupting our argument.

"Open it and go in," Walter ordered.

From what I could see on the grainy video screen, Olivia had the cautious, thoughtful look on her face that she wore when I'd seen her run FBI raids. I was surprised her arms weren't outstretched to accommodate her weapon.

Maybe they were in her head. It's not like I had any more than a cursory understanding of what went on for her during Walter's tests.

Olivia sucked in her breath. "Oh my god," she whispered.

"What do you see?" Walter commanded.

Olivia's head was jerking back and forth. She was scanning the room for something. Or, trying to catalogue a series of events unfolding quickly before her.

Olivia moaned and jerked, her vitals wavering again. "Walter—," I warned.

Walter ignored me. He was rushing bank and forth in front of the monitors, adjusting electrical impulses and flipping switches on her IV.

"Hey there," Olivia whispered. Her voice had a softness that I'd only heard when she was talking to Ella. "It's okay," she said. Then her voice dropped to a more determined note, "I'm going to get you out of here."

"Who do you see?" Walter asked. "Who are you talking to?" Olivia ignored him. Or maybe she didn't hear him anymore.

"Who are you talking to?" Walter repeated. Olivia's respiration rate and heart rate were steadily increasing, like she was running uphill very fast.

Olivia's head moved back and forth again. "Walter?"

"Yes, Olivia, I'm right here. Where are you?"

"We're—we're just outside, but they are following me."

"Who?"

"The others—" Olivia gasped and shuddered, heart rate spiking again. "Oh god—no, no—" She was really thrashing around in the tank now. Her vitals were off the charts.

"Walter," I grabbed his arm, "get her the fuck out of there NOW! Or I will!

Evidently, Walter had reached the same conclusion, which goes to show just how out of control the whole situation had gotten. He said, "Olivia, I want you to come back to us now."

"I can't."

"Olivia, I want you to focus on the sound of my voice and take a few deep breaths."

"I can't. I have to get us away."

"No," Walter's voice was now stern. "No. Olivia. Listen to me. Listen to my voice."

Olivia didn't say anything.

"Take a deep breath. Do you hear me?" Walter adjusted the electrode output.

"Yes." I saw her chest rise above the water and recede.

"Good. Now I want you to take another deep breath. Are you focusing on my voice?"

"Yes." Her chest rose and fell again. "Walter?"

"Yes, dear."

" I have to—I'm bringing someone back."

"No. Whoever you have must be left. You can't really bring something back because you are not really there. You are here with me. What you see is only in your mind."

"No, Walter." A strange sound came from inside the tank.

Then, Olivia screamed. She screamed and screamed and screamed. Screams that would have earned her top billing in a first-rate horror film.

I was out from behind the monitors faster than if the hounds of hell were after me. Which they probably were.

I threw open the doors of the tank and hauled her out, the rush of salt water that came with her drowning us both. Olivia's limp head rolled over my right shoulder.

We both slid to the floor, Olivia's legs still ridiculously propped up on the edges of the tank . I was so endlessly grateful that she was still here, that I could actually touch her, I didn't even think to lift her legs down.

Christ, she was still. And cold. The screaming must have been her last hurrah, because now she was doing one of the better imitations of a corpse I'd seen. And I've seen a few. She didn't move at all when I wiped the hair away from her face, electrodes tangling in strands of her hair as I did so.

"Walter, get me some towels. A blanket. Something." I barked.

Walter was back in an instant. With jerking hands, I used a towel to wipe her face clear of salt water. I left the electrodes for later.

Olivia wheezed and shuddered. She opened her eyes and glanced wildly around the room, clutching my soaked shirt in both hands.

As if the whole experience wasn't already horrific enough, she wrapped one arm around my neck and the other around my waist and began to sob great, choking, shuddering sobs that shook her body so intensely the vibrations jarred into my own. Her head was burrowing into my neck so deeply I didn't think she'd be coming out until spring.

Walter handed me another towel which I wrapped around her shoulders and then a blanket which I wrapped around the both of us.

Fifteen minutes later, when her sobs had slowed to great shuddering breaths pulled into her lungs seemingly against her will, I shifted trying to get us a little more comfortable on the cold, concrete floor.

Walter lifted her legs down and offered me a hand. Since Olivia was clinging to me entirely of her own volition I was able to use Walter's hand and a nearby chair to lever myself up.

I walk/shuffled us into the office to collapse onto the couch, not caring that the water would soak the fabric.

Olivia just dug into my body further. She was still trembling violently and snuffling intermittently.

I don't know if it was some kind of empathic transfer from Olivia, or just my overwhelming fear that she'd get lost, but I felt like I'd ran a race. Ran a race after a severe beating. I couldn't imagine what she must have been feeling.

Walter covered us with another blanket and, after taking a moment to process the death-look I gave him, he left us alone. I wasn't about to let him question her now. I doubt she'd be forgetting whatever just happened to her. I scooted my ass closer to the edge of the couch, leaning Olivia more comfortably against my upper body. I rested my head on the back of the couch, feeling Olivia's toes curl between my thighs. I snugged my arms more tightly around her. If it weren't for the fact that this absolutely _sucked_, I could get used to this kind of cuddling from Olivia.

We just sat there for most of the afternoon. Slowly, Olivia's trembling lessened. She dozed against me, which I intuited from the intermittent twitching of her now-relaxed body.

I had no idea what time it was, but when the light coming in the ground-floor windows began to fade Olivia took a deep breath and shifted against me.

She sat up slowly, unhiding her face from my chest. When she looked at me her eyes were so clear I felt like I could see straight through them to the end of time.

"I know where the kids are," she said.

The rock in my stomach burrowed a little deeper.

* * *

><p>I understood why people smoked. I really needed something to do with my hands.<p>

Peter sat behind me, carefully removing the electrodes snarled in my hair, patiently pulling the comb through the impossible mats after the wires were freed. That made it easier. Only Walter was looking at me.

It was as we feared, I was telling them, the children were still captured, and whoever had taken them were using them for their abilities. From what I could see when I was there, it wasn't clear who the captors were. I only met the children. If Cassandra's intimations were anywhere close to the truth, they could be rebel shapeshifters. Or, it could be a commonplace pedophile with a unique psychopathic vision. There was just no way to tell.

I saw them all alive, for now. Three boys, Melek, James and Eli, and a girl Miriam. But one of the boys, Melek, was terribly weak. It was him I had promised to get out. And the other three were terribly strong. I wasn't sure exactly what had happened, but the remaining three children's abilities were strong. Stronger than even I could comprehend. They ravaged me with only a look when I tried to carry the weaker one out.

Like I didn't have enough problems, now innocent children had been introduced to maintain the audience's plot-interest.

Well, formerly innocent. I wasn't so sure now after seeing the way they looked at me when I tried to run away with Melek in my arms. I didn't feel any better when Walter told me that the children might have gone mad, turning angry and violent from some intentional acceleration of the natural abilities.

He didn't need to remind me that I might end up the same way if I couldn't get control of my abilities.

By the time I got to the part where I tried to bring Melek back to protect him from the vicious pack of the other children who were doing something terrible enough to make him cry and writhe in agony, I was shaking so badly Peter stopped wrangling with my hair and settled his hands on my shoulders in a soothing gesture.

I drew a deep breath and exhaled, memorizing the feel of Peter's hands raising and falling on my shoulders. I wanted to remember the feeling, since his body seemed to be an immutable touchstone to this universe.

"Walter, I've got to go back. Can you figure out a way I can actually _go_ there? So I can get them back?" Peter stiffened behind me but uncharacteristically held his tongue.

"Not if you don't know where they are." Walter shook his head at me. "You weren't really _there_, Olivia. You were seeing it through someone else's memories or thoughts about the place."

"Whose?"

"I don't know." Walter scrutinized my face, but his eyes were miles away. "Or, it's possible you mentally teleported there yourself. You haven't shown any signs of being able to do that before—and physical teleporting is highly complex, if it's even possible at all."

It didn't escape my notice that Walter had just suggested something was impossible. "We have to figure it out Walter."

He pushed his notebook closer to me. "Write it down," he said. "Write it all down, every detail you can remember, and I'll see if I can figure out what happened and how to get you back there, physically, so you can bring the kids back."

####

Three days later I lay out on a gurney in the lab, Peter seated next to me clutching my left hand as if he were drowning and it was a lifeline. No Tank this time, just drugs. Lots and lots of drugs spreading a cool fire into my left arm veins, making me so drowsy and compliant I smiled daftly at Peter whose worry-creased face hovered over mine.

Still smiling ridiculously, I squeezed his hand. "You didn't argue about this?"

He shrugged, "Would it have made any difference?"

I bit my lip and then shook my head. "No."

He pulled my hand, still cradled in his, up to his cheek. "Well, there you have it."

Then the drugs made it impossible for me to focus on him anymore.

All I could sense then was the booming of Walter's voice, a whooshing along a long, dark slide and lights smearing alongside me like the Millennium Falcon lurching into hyperspace.

I felt a singular feeling of weightlessness; the balmy contentment of blankness. Identity-free, entirely selfless, I slid forever through a blackened nowhere to an empty nothing.

Then I was nothing. No one. It's the body that anchors us to our own reality: consciousness, breath, pain, desire. I am bound by these things, as surely as I am bound to the planet by gravity, or to the past by memory. But without the bother of identity, the inconvenience of autonomy, I mitigate the constraints of character and find the others.

It was like I was always meant to find them. As if, in all possible realities I lost myself, and when I did, I could find them. Instantly, I was in a dark room, technically alone, but overwhelmed with their rage and feral appetites. The need to attack was instant and overwhelming, complete depravity swallowing my remaining scraps of humanity.

I turned and saw them, three together, hands and minds linked, firm and inexorable as grief.

They let out a collective howl, silent, yet smothering.

A faint plucking ticked in opposition to the frenzy of spite. Looking down I saw Melek on the ground stretching his arms up to me beseechingly.

When I grabbed his hand the force of his capability almost knocked me over. This was what he was like _weakened_? His power surged over me a giant wave. It coursed through the two of us, an unchecked positive feedback loop.

Melek stood up next to me, leaning but upright. He barely reached above my waist, but this fight would not be determined by size.

When had I realized it was a fight?

Melek poured through me, solute diffusing into solvent. He wrapped his arms around my waist and we turned and faced them together.

Fire zinged around, lighting the atmosphere as if it were made of pure hydrogen—maybe it was. Wind whipped in mini twisters all around us, knocking Melek and I back and forth into each other.

The three raised their collective arms and suddenly I was flying back through the air, Melek still clinging to my waist. We hit the ground with a thud and drug ourselves back up. Melek was talking to me—not speaking—but thinking through to me. Together we gathered force and concentrated on the boy on the right. James, when he'd been a child and had a name. His arm exploded in a curtain of fire. Separated from the others he crumpled to the ground and I felt a hitch in the power they directed at me.

The goal of separating them was unspoken and total. Given up entirely to Melek's suggestion, I concentrated again, focusing on the link between the two since it seemed to be semi-effective the time before. The other boy, Eli, clutched his chest with a furious roar a millisecond before it exploded in fire. He too crumpled to the ground.

Another stir in the swirling force overwhelming my psyche. Now, only the girl, Miriam, was left standing. Melek now slumped against me, but his power still flowed into me.

A wave of concern, not fear exactly, flooded from Miriam across our connections. Then, she disappeared, slipping behind one of the still-burning atmospheric flames.

Melek slid to the floor and his power abruptly ceased, like an electrical current flicking off.

A tug signaled the return of my earthly senses. A creeping horror assaulted me as I scanned the area littered with little boy bodies. I heard Walter's voice, felt a crush around my hand.

A harder pull at the back of my head beckoned me home. I pushed Walter's voice away and shook off the squeeze of my hand. I knelt down and gathered Melek to me, weakness and terror making me half-carry, half-drag him over to where the first boy had fallen.

I stumbled back across to where the third boy lay slumped. He was slightly smaller, but so very, very heavy. Dragging him back to my growing pile of little bodies took the last of my strength. I noticed no signs of the fire that had exploded his midsection.

Walter's voice was most insistent. I opened myself to hear him as I collapsed down next to the boys.

I had no idea if this was going to work or not, but I was going to try to bring them back with me. Walter said that touch might help, so I worked my legs through the pile of little boy, clasping my hands around body parts so that I was touching them all, enclosing them as best I could with my limbs. With my pinky finger I reached through an imaginary space grabbing what I hoped was Peter's hand.

Then I concentrated on Walter's voice, Peter's touch and thought hard about home. About going home. About taking them all with me.

I was sliding through blackness again.

Suddenly, Peter's face was inches from mine and my known senses overwhelmed me: Peter's eyes, greyed with worry, the smell of Walter's aftershave as he rushed to and fro, the beeping of machines, a bitter taste in the back of my throat, and a heavy weight pinning me to the concrete floor.

A smile split Peter's face and he let out a rush of breath. I couldn't move, but Peter leaned his forehead against my own murmuring indistinguishable words of praise and gratitude.

I glanced down to see if my body had made it home. When I looked I registered Walter pulling off the little boy who pinned my legs to the floor.

"You did it," Peter whispered. "You did it."


	5. Chapter 5

**Sum Over Histories**

**By Mvariorum**

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><p><strong>Rating<strong>: M: So kiddies, the faint of heart, and those with refined taste should scoot along elsewhere. You have been warned.  
><strong>Story Notes<strong>: Please accept my preemptive apologies for the pseudo-pseudoscience. Not a scientist. Sadly, I'm not even a pseudoscientist. Never will be.  
><strong>Disclaimer<strong>: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.  
><strong>Spoilers<strong>: AU after early season 3 (more or less around _Do Shapeshifters Dream of Electric Sheep?). _Includes some elements of the early part of Season 3, but no spoilers beyond that.

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><p><strong>AN**: Thank you again to those who reviewed, alerted, and favorited. I respond to those of you who have PM enabled.

Special thanks to my beta starg8fans who makes me make things make sense (See? She didn't beta that line!)

**Chapter 5**

Melek died en route to the hospital. A full autopsy would be performed, but on cursory examination no one was able to determine a cause of death.

I had a feeling an autopsy wasn't going explain much.

Melek's pulse had been thready and faint, I had taken it myself as soon as I felt able to tear myself from Olivia's side to tend to more pressing matters.

It felt like it took hours for the squad to come. In reality, it must have only been a few minutes that I lay there, half on top of Olivia giving thanks to whatever deities deigned to listen. By the time they got there, we had determined the other two boys were alive—one of them barely.

I had decided that twice was enough and I could live my whole life over again, and never, ever want to see Olivia shimmer in front of me and disappear, my hand closing impotently around hers when it happened.

At the hospital, Melek was pronounced dead, Olivia was given a clean bill of health, and the other two boys slated for surgery.

Olivia managed to slip out when I was minding the unconscious Eli before he was rushed into surgery.

Broyles arrived shortly after that with the boys' devastated parents in tow. His calm presence commandeered the situation quickly, freeing me to collect Walter and return to the lab.

Back at the lab, I felt angry and uncertain. I set to work cleaning up the mess Olivia created when she came crashing back to this dimension, dragging the boy's wrecked bodies with her.

I didn't know what was going to happen in the future, but I was finished playing the Bond-girl to Olivia's James, responsible for the cleavage-baring close-ups and the witty repartee.

I was tired. Tired of Olivia acting like she was the only one violated. Like she was the only one who lost something. She wanted to go back to before. She'd told me that more than once. Yeah, well, so did I. Wanted to go back to before, when I could pretend to forget about Walter, before I was bound to Olivia by the vagaries of fate and circumstance, before unknown entities outlined my certain violence and destruction on a scrap of paper.

She'd have to get in line. Everyone wants to go back, wants a second chance to re-write their own history, but there's fuck all we can do about it now. We had to deal with the world as we had made it, and the fact was, Walter's selfishness had made a wreck of it. But it was my own weakness and longing that flung the wreck about further, bringing us to a place where Olivia wouldn't even look me in the eye long enough so we could work together to sort out this mess.

I resolved that from here on out, whatever it was we'd be doing to keep the dimensions from collapsing into each other, we'd do it together, or not at all. And if I had to tie Olivia up and gag her to make her see reason, that's what I'd do.

Walter stayed away from the black cloud of my temper as long as he could, but the lab is small and he could only avoid me for so long.

He stopped me when I had run out of things to slam back into place and was contemplating mucking out Gene's stall.

He approached me carefully. "Son, talk to her. _Go_ there. It's harder to say no in person. And even if she does, she'll know you came for her."

I felt ragged and raw, like I'd been dragged naked over coarse gravel. And I wasn't in the mood for Walter's advice.

"Yeah, well, I'm not going to listen to relationship advice from the man who sings _Sweet Transvestite_, complete with callbacks, to put himself to sleep every night."

After a lifetime of smart ass comments, this was one too many. In a blink Walter closed the distance between us. He looked like he might slap me, but instead he snatched my forearm hard and squeezed it in both his hands.

Walter's pale eyes were hard and unflinching. They seemed to look straight through me.

"Don't you _ever_ think you're the only one who made a mistake that destroyed someone he loved!" His words were delivered in the deep-timbered, arrogant-scientist tone guaranteed to piss me off in zero-point-two seconds.

_I_ was his mistake, of course.

And it destroyed my mother.

He was trying to show me that he had suffered too, and could offer some advice.

Fuck that. I was too preoccupied remembering Mom working two jobs to pay for the crummy apartments we lived in. Remembering falling asleep to the soundtrack of her quiet sobbing leaking through the thin walls at night.

"A mistake? A mistake Walter! This wasn't a _mistake_, goddamn it! I thought it was her!"

I hated him right then. Hated the heartsick authority that radiated from him.

"I'm not like you Walter. I didn't ignore her for a decade so I could scramble the brains of little girls, pushing them to start fires or kill other people with their minds! I didn't leave her alone with no money and a kid to raise because I was so goddamned narcissistic the only thing left I could do was go bug-shit crazy!—I didn't—"

I stopped, though I could have gone on forever. I was angry at Walter for all those years when I wanted to take care of Mom, but couldn't because nothing I did ever made a dent in the despair that overwhelmed her like a terminal disease. The anger just barely covered the guilt I felt for my own negligence and blindness. It swamped me endlessly, making it difficult to remember that only a very small part of this was Walter's fault.

Then Walter did slap me—hard. His strength surprised me, and the force of it pushed my head back and sank him to his knees in the hay piled next to Gene's stall. The right side of my face stung as I willed each finger of my clenched fists to unfurl, forcibly reminding myself why belting a crazy, old man didn't sell well to the average jury.

"She _made_ me leave" The implacable bleakness of Walter's voice cut through my reproaches like a chainsaw through fine linen.

He rested his shaking hands on his thighs. "I loved her. Every bit as much as you love—." He stopped.

"She's in her grave and I love her still. I'd never expect you to understand, you were just a boy." Walter's voice cracked with the strain. "She could never forgive me. Never forgive me for bringing you back. Couldn't forgive _herself_ for not sending you straight back. And I could never, never ask her."

He looked at me, gravity and experience pulling hard at the lines in his face. His empty, upright palms cradled something imaginary, begging redemption from an indifferent god. His voice was so low I could barely hear, "Could you do it son? Could you take it away from her? The only thing she wants?

Silence filled the lab displaced only by the soft rustling sounds of Gene shifting in her stall.

For a moment I felt the wooly clarity of an ontological shift. _All that is solid melts into air. All that is holy is profaned. _

Then I knew, like the grief was mine, the force of what they must have went through—the impact of my death and Walter's bringing me over on them.

I had never thought of my parents as lovers before. A self-proclaimed authority on all things, it was obvious to me that Walter was a self-absorbed bastard and my mother a victim of his megalomania. I had built my entire identity on those premises.

But once, they had been two people who loved each other. I was still seeing Walter through the eyes of a child. A child who only knew a fraction of one side of the story.

Walter was a scientist—he lived to conduct experiments that solved problems. I could see how as a father he wanted to save me and as a scientist he had discovered a way. For the first time since I learned Walter took me from the other side, I could feel how he just couldn't tell my mother no. How his good intentions got ravaged by regrettable, but forgivable, human selfishness.

I felt how, while my mother might have been able to forgive Walter his selfishness, she could never forgive herself her own.

Is that how this would end for Olivia and me? In theory, the stakes were different for us. I didn't use her child against her, but I wasn't sure that from our perspective it mattered.

I understand Olivia better than she thinks I do. It wasn't the sex or even the intimacy I'd shared with the Faux. Those things didn't help, of course, but the real problem is that Olivia couldn't forgive herself—for not getting home faster, for not protecting our world from the enemy, for not turning the bad guy into a puddle of mercury. Olivia is a Paladin. She's duty-sworn to protect the unprotected, damn the personal consequences. If necessary, she'll fight until the end of the world.

It's all or nothing with my Olivia. It always has been. There are no points for second place. Partial victories will be taken out back and shot at dawn.

Because she couldn't protect us, she thought she failed us—and failed herself. And she cut herself off from us so she could beat herself up about it in private. I wondered if, like Walter, she would just withdraw again and again until she just disappeared into the madness of her own mind.

_Εiναι μια καλuτερη aνθρωπο απo o,τι ο πατeρας σας_. _Be a better man than your father_. Mom translated Hector's wish into a command, probably to make me feel like I had a choice.

Well, I was no Astyanax, no babe to be thrown from the bloody city walls. I'd already counted on being a better man than my father. Maybe I was supposed to be a better man than my mother, who just ran and ran, absenting herself from her own conscience, making me forever wonder what it was I did wrong.

"Walter, I've got to go."

He didn't look at me. "Yes, son. Of course."

* * *

><p>Peter arrived a half an hour earlier than I thought he would.<p>

After the doctors checked me out and declared me fit (for what? I wondered), I took a cab home from the hospital. Peter stayed with Walter hovering over the boys' cots in the ER like an anxious mother hen.

I calculated the amount of time it would take him to escort Walter back to the lab, pretend to clean up the mess, pick the inevitable fight with Walter about his recklessness and presumption, and then flee to my house—either to carry on the argument or seek solace I wasn't sure.

I suppose we'd all be better off if I knew myself half as well as I knew Peter.

Peter's back was to me, closing the door. I barely let the lock click into place before I was in his arms. I'd visited some inner universe and fused my consciousness to feral beings who used to be normal children. I felt like the walking dead, my existence questionable, my reality revenant-thin. I'd needed Peter for a lot of reasons in the past, few of them admirable. At this moment, I needed him to make me feel real.

Peter froze when I launched myself at him. I kissed him for a full ten seconds before he grabbed my arms, spun me around, and pressed my back up against the door.

I could see him fighting for control, and the strain tightened his shoulders and quickened his breath. He held me at arm's length away from him and studied my face carefully. To ward off the shame, I reminded myself that whatever it was, our relationship had never been normal.

Everything I had ever known about life, the universe and everything had been pulverized since the Bishops infiltrated my life. I didn't know who I was anymore. But in both universes, there was only one Peter, so he was always himself, never an imposter. In my thoroughly fucked-up existence, that alone made him worth salvaging. And myself as well, if only possibly by association.

Right now, I knew he was real because his hands were solid where they gripped my arms and his shoulders vibrated against my hands with the effort he took studying me.

I'm not sure if he found in my face what he was looking for or not. He let go of me, though, and didn't protest when I reached over and shucked off his jacket. He stood motionless when it hissed to the floor, his eyes never leaving my face.

I reached up to unbutton his shirt, hating the way my hands wobbled, and then forgetting myself entirely when his shirt unfolded and I could stroke the plateau of his collarbones through the smooth, worn fabric of his t-shirt.

He watched me in that fixed, silent way as I pushed the shirt from his shoulders, bending my head to free his wrists where it caught, before dropping down to unfasten his belt and jeans. When I bent to push down his pants, he rested his hands on my shoulders for balance as he stepped out of them.

Really, given his steady, silent scrutiny, he should give workshops to the FBI on the art of rattling suspects.

I grabbed his hand, leading him to my room. The day after I got back, I took a rare afternoon off. I used the time to shop and completely refurbish my room. I changed everything from the mattress on up: new furniture, new sheets, new dresser, nightstand, and lamp. I replaced all my clothes and my minimal makeup and accessories, down to the hair ties and the ancient headband, a relic from high school, that I used to hold my hair back when I washed my face.

Peter 's small nod endorsed the room's changes.

But he still stood several paces away from me. In the punitive presence of my refurbished room, I was suddenly hesitant to approach him.

Peter must have sensed the sea change because he ended his bone-rattling surveillance of me. He stepped, closing the distance between us and said, "Olivia, I can leave . . . " He reached out like he might touch me, but then he drew his arm back, fingers furling into a loose fist at his side.

Somewhere I found a voice that rolled out decisive and clear.

"No."

Then we both tumbled over Niagara without a barrel.

Peter hauled me into him and brought his mouth down to mine with a groan. He smelled like leather-bound books and the unlabeled disinfectant from the lab, like imagination and intellect. His hands were warm on my back and his mouth could have shattered the vows of an Abbess.

I backed him up to the bed until his knees buckled and pushed, following him down onto the bed. Climbing so his hips were between my knees, I leaned back and reached down to lift the hem of his shirt. He straightened up to help me, lifting his arms above his head.

After I pitched his t-shirt aside, I began to pull off my own shirt. He reached down for the hem of my tank and froze. My hands gripped his shoulders and he looked up at me from between my forearms, "Olivia?"

Finally, a question I knew the answer to. I grabbed his hands and helped him haul my tank over my head, then quickly stood and discarded the rest of my clothing. Smart man, he followed suit and removed the rest of his clothes.

Back on him, I lowered my mouth to his. He caught my breasts in his hands, holding me half-suspended in air just a few centimeters from him so I could only just brush his lips with mine.

I groaned and he let me go, slipping his hands around my back.

My mouth and hands wandered everywhere: his neck, the vulnerable crook of his elbows, the flat plane of his stomach, the taut expanse of his thighs. In case I never got the chance again, I wanted to know I'd touched him everywhere at least once.

When I caught the length of his cock in my mouth he groaned. He reached around my leg, rubbing my clit, dipping his middle finger inside me.

I slid him into my mouth and pulled out again, stroking, gathering speed and gaining rhythm.

"Jesus. Olivia." And he repeated it, over and over, melding the two names together into a string of indistinguishable vowels and consonants, ""

I wanted to stretch time so I could prolong the rush of skin-on-skin. But something more forceful in me hummed with need and couldn't wait any longer. I slid up his body and straddled him. Then I grasped his cock, positioned it and slid down onto him.

"Christ" I couldn't help gasping. It's not like we'd never done this before. But had it always felt so substantial, like he was the only thing solid tethering me to earth?

Maybe I just hadn't been paying attention.

Peter's hands gripped my hips, grinding me down onto him. His head lifted and tucked on the right side of mine whispering non-words, garbling bits of my name. "Livy."

I was only "Livy" in bed, and it was never an endearment. It was a curse torn out of his throat when it wouldn't perform basic functions anymore.

It was too much. He was too hard, too deep. And it had been so long. Too long.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph I'd missed him. How could I have denied myself this?

Ever.

His skin with its faint glimmer flared like polished obsidian. Then he rolled his hips under mine, subtly changing the angle. In less than two minutes I came sloppily, shuddering and groaning for a long time before slumping boneless over him.

He chuckled low in his throat, insolent and fond at once. It was such an authentic, Peter-noise, emanating from a time so much less dire than the present, that I pressed the side of my face to his chest so I could hear it in stereo. I heard the rumble of his laugh overtop the thud of his heart and felt a painful, hollowed-out feeling in the pit of my stomach. I lay there on him trying to get my bearings.

After a moment, there was some scrambling as I tried to control my orgasm-dazed body. We staggered our way through, managing not to jab each other's important parts. Then, I was on my back staring up at him.

My hair spun out around my head when I'd flopped onto my back. Peter put a hand on either side of my face, pinning me to the bed with it. Nose to nose, the glimmer faded and his smudged-ink eyes gazed into the back of my skull.

Pinned under him I was as helpless as a silent film damsel roped to the tracks in the path of an oncoming train. He increased and decreased the pace repeatedly until the connection outside of our bodies was as slick as the connection inside and I was trembling and whimpering with need again.

"Please," I begged for something I couldn't name.

_It's me_, I was thinking. _It's me_. Even though I honestly didn't know what that meant anymore. I may have whispered it out loud because Peter's rhythm faltered a moment.

I kneaded the plaited muscles of his shoulders and stroked his smooth back down to the bowl-shaped depression above his ass. My hands found a home on his oil slick hips. I used them to urge him on, pressed him deeper until I came again. A moment later, he arched his back and followed me.

He collapsed onto me, elbows propping the brunt of his body weight off of me. His face tucked into the space between my shoulder and my ear, stubbled cheek scraping mine in a most pleasant way.

We lay there overcome with post-coital lassitude. I wanted to stay there forever, with his body shielding me from harsh reality, his tangible weight pressing me into the mattress until I thought my oversensitive skin could feel every micron of it, like the princess who proved her identity by sleeping on twenty mattresses.

"Sorry," he muttered. "Too heavy." Then, face shuttered, like he was afraid of what I might do or say next, he started to roll off me onto the other side of the bed.

I must have looked lost, or stricken, or both because when he sneaked a look at my face his own softened immediately.

"C'mere" he said and then snaked an arm around me, pulling me with him as he rolled over onto his side and settled my body alongside his so we were face-to-face like stacked cordwood. Once settled, he reached out and grabbed my hand, twining his fingers with my own, stroking the outside of my hand with his thumb.

Peter's touch is better than high-priced therapy. The most ordinary physical contact from him pacifies me like a milk-drunk infant. Something about his touch, something aside from and well beyond lust, makes me feel whole again, strong enough to begin once more, no matter how much despair ambushed me.

We laid there like that for a long time, me revived by his touch and him exploring my hand like he'd never held anything so engrossing before.

Much, much later, he spoke and his voice was fearful and certain in the way people speak to the terminally ill, "I know you don't want to know anything about what happened, and I understand."

I could sense a "but" coming and I really didn't want to hear what he would say next. For a man supposedly so uncommunicative and private, Peter was irritatingly talkative. If he would only be quiet I could lay here and pretend that the last few months didn't happen.

I was already overdrawn on reality and figured I was in the black for a little denial.

I didn't say anything, because I wasn't about to share any of this with him. In the half-light coming in from the street his eyes were the flecked blue of a robin's egg. He waited a long moment before saying,

"It was different."

"Peter, I really don't . . ."

"Just, listen for a minute, will you? No details, I promise. Just . . ."

He paused, watching himself reach up and stroke my arm. "She was different. And I didn't pay attention. I wanted it to be because of me."

He sighed and inched closer to me. " But she never—" He tapped his forehead between his eyebrows. "She wasn't _here_."

I flinched. We'd never talked about the connection I had to him. About the minor one he had to me.

Never, at least, without witnesses.

He reached back to capture my hand. "And anyway, you'd know if I was lying. Go ahead."

Oh no. I wasn't going to go digging. No way.

No way.

It must have shown on my face, because he smiled and said, "Go on. It's okay. No digging. It's right there."

Seduced by his voice and his touch, I reached out tentatively. I was rusty from lack of practice—all the time Over There—all the time since I'd been back—always blocking, pushing him away.

Though I'd never admit it to anyone, least of all Peter, it was a relief to embrace it again. It was such _work_ to exclude him. There was a time when I seamlessly wandered into him without even realizing it until I was already there. That too, had its share of problems, but now, it was an effort to reach out to him. It felt too intentional, too much like an invasion.

I was just about to pull back when I felt him unfold, split open like an axe-felled tree. Confusion, layered over anger and betrayal. Compassion, and a tenderness he was trying to hide. Gratitude that I trusted him enough to be here with him now. And undergirding everything else, satisfaction that she never knew this—that whatever else had been taken, it wasn't this.

"I missed you, Olivia. Can you feel it?" I nodded, unsure of what to say.

He reached up and cupped my cheek with his hand. Then he leaned closer and kissed me.

When he pulled back, he said, "Whatever else happens, I wanted you to know." He looked down between us, where our hands were linked, and said, "I'm here. If you'll let me, we can do this together."

Maybe it was the repeated near-death experiences, or the evening's enveloping dark, or the fact that he just gave me a front-row seat to the vulnerability rolling through him. Whatever it was, for once I let myself believe him.

* * *

><p>I woke up alone in Olivia's bed when the light in the windows was lightening to grey. I could still see the indentation in her pillow and I could hear the shower running. It wasn't as if she abandoned me, but for a moment it felt like it all the same.<p>

I remembered the last time I woke in this room. I hadn't been alone. When the Faux was here, I'd practically moved in and didn't sleep alone for the few weeks we were together.

I internally poked at my emotions for the Faux, testing them out to see how they felt. I had deliberately walled them off since Olivia was back, but it had been impossible not to think about her, even when I didn't want to. Impossible not to compare the two of them, unfair though it may be.

There was nothing there. How was that possible? The warmth and tenderness I'd given and received from her had dried and peeled away leaving nary a stain, like egg yolk on a necktie.

I was sure I would have missed her, though I should have known better. She'd been easy to be with—the hallmark of a first-class Grifter. I'd been well-liked too; it's easy to be well-liked when every aspect of your character is designed to please the mark. I wondered how easily she read me—it couldn't have been hard. Between Olivia's native intuition and actually being in my head, I'd stopped bothering to conceal anything from her for a very long time. Out of habit, I was probably right there in the open for the Faux's plucking. Olivia is so patently determined to ignore me that I never have to hide with her, she'll just plain overlook the words or needs that come out streaked with my heart's blood if it's convenient for her. At first, it sounds callous, but when you get right down to it is enormously freeing because you never have to hide. I'm not sure what it says about me that I preferred playing second fiddle to Olivia's other concerns, however legitimately pressing, than to being the hero of the Faux's. But the truth of it was right there in the empty space where my contentment for the semi-normal, domestic fantasy the Faux weaved for us used to be.

I'd lived one lie or another for more years that I'd ever intended to. I guess that made me unwilling to give up on the truth. Even when the truth was painful.

The water shut off, and a few minutes later, Olivia emerged from the bathroom in a cloud of steam. When she saw that I was awake, she hiked her towel more closely around her body. Eyes down she came closer to the bed. Emotions flickered across her face and then vanished, like the flash of television characters when someone was channel surfing.

Taking a chance, I reached across the bed to her side and lifted the covers, waggling my eyebrows at her, giving her Arrogant Smirk #3, guaranteed to make all the ladies, except the only one I wanted of course, swoon.

She actually laughed and the transformation in her face was enthralling. I sat there staring up at her, smiling idiotically. Then, miracle of miracles, she slid into bed next to me, damp towel and all, turning her back on me, aligning herself along my front. I settled my chin against her shoulder which still held drops of water she'd missed with her towel. I slid one arm under her neck and wrapped the other around her waist, tucking it under her breast.

Since she wasn't drunk, drugged, or diseased, I had to wonder what prompted this outpouring, from Olivia anyway, of affection.

Olivia slowly stiffened in my arms. I could almost see the little hourglass spinning above her head: thinking, thinking.

"We should _talk_," she said, but she made the word sound savage, like she'd suggested we should begin torturing one another.

I waited a few seconds, just to let her know I'd listened and gave it some thought before saying, "I said everything I needed to last night."

The silence stretched wide. Then, so soft I almost didn't hear her, she said, "I'm sorry."

I was floored by her admission. Olivia wasn't big on apologies. And, really, apart from being fed up and helpless, and closed-off and well, _her_, there wasn't much about the situation she was responsible for. "Wasn't your fault," I replied.

"Some of it was," she countered.

"Only a very little. A tiny drop in the sea of our misfortune." I reached up to brush back the chunk of damp hair that had fallen over her shoulder.

She turned toward me very slightly, still not looking at me. "What are we going to do?" she asked.

"Honestly?" I replied, "I don't know." I reached back around her and hugged her close. "We'll find a way, though. It's what we do."

She squeezed my wrist where it rested under her ribcage.

And that was all we said before I decided to take advantage of the fact that she had actually willingly come back to a bed I was still occupying. In the past, only a very few times had I stayed the entire night, and even on those rare occasions when the sex made us too tired to even think about moving until dawn, she was already out of bed by the time I woke up. Those mornings she was awkwardly courteous, with her shuffling me out of her little lair just as soon as she politely could.

I nuzzled her shoulder and neck with my scruffy face, letting my teeth nip at the spot I knew she liked, just where her neck met her shoulder.

Encouraged by the little shiver I felt run through her body I skimmed a hand down her side, enjoying the satin curves of her waist, and hips, nibbling a little harder at her favorite spot, shaping her ass with my hands.

The shiver turned to a shudder when I reached around between her legs and stroked my index finger across her hot folds.

She swiveled to face me, reaching her arms around the back of my head and pressed her open mouth to mine. Her hot tongue thrust along the inside of my mouth as her leg slid along mine to my hip, giving my hand better access.

I snarled my free hand in the length of her hair, tugging her head back so I could gnaw on her neck.

She moaned and shoved her hips against me as I slid my finger inside her.

She was already rainforest-wet; just stroking her made me feel like my spine was on fire. Jesus, it had only been a few hours and I was already starved for her again. Like however much I'd have of her, it'd never, ever be enough. I wanted to roll her over, pin her under me, and drive into her. I wanted to leave a mark so she would know that she was mine.

Yes, when it comes down to it, I'm a possessive jerk. I am, after all, a man, and therefore entitled to a certain amount of leniency in that department. At least I'm smart enough not to say these things out loud.

I bent my head to her breast, drawing the nipple in my mouth and she moaned again, arching her back against me, clutching my shoulders. Outside of bed Olivia may be as personally evasive as a member of the Cosa Nostra, but in bed she communicates her needs in 500 point, billboard-sized font, her responses as easy to read as bold-black letters on a white background.

She rolled on her back, towing me along with her hands so I was half-on top of her. I palmed her breast while my mouth headed south to meet up with the stroking fingers of my other hand. I scraped my teeth across the incline of her ribcage and nuzzled the slope of her belly beneath it.

Her back arched, feet digging into the mattress, leaving me space to slide my arm under the small of her back. Skewered with one hand, I held her squirming hips still from underneath with my other. Finding she couldn't move her hips, she gasped and thrashed her head when my mouth met my busy fingers

I worked slowly for a long time, laving her with my tongue, piercing her with my fingers, thoroughly drunk on the seascape taste of her body.

When I finally teased her clit between my tongue and teeth, she roared.

The lurching force of her orgasm nearly broke my nose against her pubic bone, but I rode her out with my tongue and fingers until she grabbed the sides of my head and dragged me up on top of her.

I entered her when she was still coming, her pussy gripping me smoothly as she crashed along the backside of her orgasm. Leaning down, I propped myself on one elbow and scooped one of her thighs on top of my arm. I rested the back of her knee on my shoulder and tilted her pelvis up for better access. Her other foot knocked along the back of my hip, urging me forward. I reached under her neck to the base of her skull, using it to push her head closer to me so my chin rested on her shoulder and I could crush her to me along every possible point of contact.

I shuddered and surged forward. She rocked with me, meeting me in halfway on every thrust. I felt like I was sheathed in her to the base of my spine and heading deeper with every lunge.

After only a short while I could feel the ripple of my orgasm pulsing just out of reach.

She grabbed my head, her hands covering my cheeks and ears, and turned her forehead so it rested under mine. Her eyes widened and she gasped my name like it was something material torn out of her. I looked down into her bright, spring-field eyes and the wave crested and flooded me, taking conscious thought away with it.

She kept meeting my irregular thrusts even when they slowed and my cock went limp inside her. I leaned to one side, jamming my jerking hand between us to thumb her clit. It wasn't exactly graceful, but given that the intensity of my orgasm made me feel like I'd been hit across the back of the head with a two by four, I managed to get the job done more or less effectively.

Her hands scrabbled along the side of my face and she shuddered and moaned, clutching me as she rode the waves of her climax like she was adrift at sea and I was a piece of flotsam.

I yanked my hand out from between us, heaving myself to the side to collapse next to her on the bed.

After a while spent catching my breath, I propped myself on my elbow, allowing myself the luxury of just looking at her, spread out across the bed in a pink and rumpled stupor where I'd left her. I even tempted Olivia's good will enough to reach out to touch her, stroking lazy patterns across her breasts, down on her belly and hips and back up with an open hand.

Say what you will about me, that I'm a wise-ass, that I'm a pain-in-the-ass, but I'm also damned skilled at rocking Olivia's world sexually. Whatever it was between us: frustration, chemistry, fate, I'd bet up to the last penny of my newly-acquired fortune that none of her other lovers wanted to please her through to every molecule as much as I did.

She opened one eye and raised an eyebrow at me. "You are awfully pleased with yourself."

I narrowed my eyes at her when I reached between her legs, gratified to feel her quivering aftershocks when my fingers grazed the insides of her thighs, "Well, sweetheart, if you've got the goods—" I trailed off, smiling wickedly at her.

She just rolled her eyes.

Wait a minute. She didn't say I _looked_ pleased. She said I _was_ pleased. "You can hear me?" I asked, my voice embarrassingly shrill.

She nodded. "I can't keep you out when we're together . . . like that."

"So, it's not all the time?" I had to admit I was curious about the details. I knew she couldn't, or didn't, read my mind all the time, because if she did, I'd have been dead by her hand long ago. But I'd never figured she'd answer me if I asked before.

"It's not like a radio," she replied. A frown creased her brow. "Well, maybe it _is_ a little like a radio. A radio that is all static, or turned down really low." She shrugged. "You are just always there, in the background, though I can't hear the details. Most of the time if I want to hear you, I have to call it up."

I nodded, thinking hard about how gorgeous she was with her now dry hair laying in a curtain across her shoulders, how much I loved the sleek-damp feeling of her skin under my hands, how glorious it felt when her body clutched at my cock—"

She scowled at me. "Stop that."

"Sorry," I said without a trace of remorse, "Can't help myself."

"Most of the time," she said pointedly, "I'm trying to tune you _out_."

She retrieved my hand from where they had drifted to the damp curls at the base of her stomach, guiding it back to her belly and breasts. "It's different with the other Olivia, though. With her, I can't figure out which one of us is me."

I snuggled next to her, laying my head on her shoulder and wrapping my arm around her. "You're you. She's her. End statement."

Her uncomfortable shift under me told me she didn't believe me. Which was only fair, because I didn't rightly believe myself. Hell, aside from Rachel, I probably knew Olivia better than anyone, which isn't saying much, but it's still true, and I hadn't noticed the difference for several weeks. Now, I felt like I could tell them apart only by watching each of them raise her eyebrows at a distance of several football fields.

This was hardly helpful though, so I didn't press the matter. The future was foggy and uncertain, not to mention dangerous and I wanted to avoid making promises I wouldn't be able to keep.


	6. Chapter 6

**Sum over Histories**

by MVariorum

**Summary**: Olivia comes back. Olivia and Peter save the world. Again.  
><strong>Categories<strong>: Romance; Adventure; Smut  
><strong>Pairings<strong>: Peter/Olivia  
><strong>Rating<strong>: M. So kiddies, the faint of heart, and those with refined taste should scoot along elsewhere. You have been warned.  
><strong>Story Notes<strong>: Please accept my preemptive apologies for the pseudo-pseudoscience. Not a scientist. Sadly, I'm not even a pseudoscientist. Never will be.  
><strong>Disclaimer<strong>: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.  
><strong>Spoilers<strong>: AU after early season 3 (more or less around _Do Shapeshifters Dream of Electric Sheep?). _Includes some elements of the early part of Season 3, but no spoilers beyond that.

**A/N:** I am rapidly catching up to where I am currently writing with weekly updates, so I am going to stretch them out a little bit. Look for them every 10-14 days after this. Many apologies if there are any of you out there on the edge of your seats, but I just don't write well under pressure! Thank you all who reviewed—I really appreciate everyone's comments. It's wonderful to learn the story is resonating with some folks.

As always, thank you to my beta, starg8fans for the wonderful help and encouragement. This whump's for you!

**Chapter 6 / ?**

During the first two weeks of December it snowed on and off steadily for several days. By the middle of the month Boston was blanketed with nearly a foot of snow.

"I called Broyles. You are taking the day off." Peter was standing next to my bed looking down at me where I was still slumped, trying to avoid facing the world. He was wearing nothing but his boxers and a cup of coffee, which he extended towards me. As incentives go, it wasn't bad.

"What?" I asked, hauling myself up to a semi-seated position. I took the coffee from his hand, trying to decide if I wanted to make an issue out of his high-handedness or stick my free hand into the gaping, face-level hole in the front of his boxers.

He put his hands on his hips, peering down at me. "You know, a day off. Playing hooky. Feigning illness. A day in which one does not report to work for reasons other than hospitalization and/or impending death."

I just stared at him, the inner battle between lust and autonomy making it difficult for me to focus.

"C'mon, Dunham," he sat down on the bed and slapped my naked ass playfully, "didn't you ever skip school? Play hooky to spend the day making out with a Letterman at a nearby park? Or just laze around in your underwear watching cable," now he was squeezing my ass suggestively, "alone in the house, with nothing to do . . .," he looked me up and down with faraway eyes, "maybe invite a friend over, a petite Asian girl with . . .," his voice trailed off. His eyes lost their glassy look and snapped back to my face like he had forgotten I was there. "Sorry about that," he said as he dragged a feigned-lustful breath into his chest, "That last part is my fantasy."

He blocked the swift elbow I gave to his ribs. "I'm taking you on a trip," he said and then nodded seriously like he'd just discovered a cure for cancer.

"Where?" I decided I wasn't opposed to taking a day off per se, it just never had occurred to me. But I still didn't trust the look on his face.

"It's a surprise." He glanced outside where the snow was falling again. "C'mon, we gotta get going. Our flight—"

"Flight!" My voice was so loud I had to consciously lower it before continuing. "I know I'm unfamiliar with the practice, but taking a day off does not usually involve air transport."

He smoothed my hair where it lay on the pillow. "It does when you go with me," he replied.

"You want me to help you spend all your ill-gotten gains?" I scowled at him. "No thanks."

Peter grinned. "Would it ruin my dangerous and sexy image if I told you most of my supposedly ill-gotten gains were more or less legal—at least in the places where they were gotten?"

A fiery, earthbound comet wouldn't ruin the aura of smart-and-dangerous sex Peter wore as casually as Pigpen wore his cloud of dirt. "No," I replied, "but I probably wouldn't believe you."

In the first couple of years we'd worked together I hadn't thought about Peter and Walter having money. I'm not sure how I missed it—they were obviously swimming in it, even before Walter inherited Massive Dynamic. Peter's rarified "skills" probably made whatever it was he used to do for his shadowy employers quite lucrative. If I knew Peter, he had large sums of money squirreled away in a half a dozen untraceable international bank accounts. Whatever clandestine work Walter had done for the government in the 70's and 80's probably came with a sizable lump of hush-money and it's not like Walter had much opportunity to spend it in the last 20 years.

Apart from all the talk about lake and beach houses, their obvious wealth just didn't show in their day-to-day lifestyles. Neither of them liked to rack up personal possessions. Peter didn't on principal, or more probably, out of sheer cussedness and Walter didn't either, out of habit or absent-mindedness. In Cambridge, even in the current market, sprawling, three-level Victorians couldn't be leased at under several thousand dollars a month, and that was without the improbably large yard and off-street parking. Peter had dismissed Walter's "two bedroom, semi-detached, furnished housing for professors" after he visited it, growling that if he was expected to babysit Walter indefinitely, he'd need more space. Five days later, they moved into their house, which obviously met Peter's needs for space and Walter's need for morning sun, among his other bizarre requirements. I'd never asked Peter how he got it, though I'd bet from one of his elusive "contacts." The fact that it was decorated in early-80's-garage sale may have been more a matter of taste than necessity. Or maybe apathy. Nobody who lived there cared if the couches matched the curtains or if the dishes matched each other. So the whole house could have been outfitted with one quick trip to a few of the area's thrift stores. Walter had an unnatural attachment to his monstrous station wagon and Peter could keep it running, so it became one of the many indulgences Peter granted Walter, largely I suspected, because it gave Peter something to bitch about regularly.

Peter got off the bed and bent to the floor to gather the rest of his clothes. Since he was already heading for the shower, I decided to exercise my rights as a semi-regular sex partner and demand a shave.

"If you want me back in this bed ever again, you're going to have to scrape that hair off your face," I told him. Peter's scruff wasn't half as sexy as he imagined it was. My thighs had about as much rug burn as they could take and the hair hid all the best things about his face when he smiled.

He stood up and his eyebrows rose practically off the top of his forehead. "_That's_ what I gotta do to get you back in bed? Shave?"

"Probably," I replied noncommittally.

He tilted his head to the side and rolled his eyes. "And here I was planning a romantic getaway. Dinner. Flowers. Possibly a show." He shook his head at me with mock-disappointment, "You're easy Dunham."

"Isn't that what you like about me?" I parried, tilting my head so I could overtly eye his ass through the thin material of his boxers.

Something thoughtful flickered behind his eyes but he repressed it before I could catch the thought for myself. "No," he replied, "What I like about you is that you're anything _but_ easy." He shrugged. "Well, that and the fact that you could suck the chrome off a trailer hitch without breaking a sweat."

I screeched and threw the pillow at him. But Peter was too fast for me. He'd already retreated to the bathroom and turned the water on. The pillow bounced off the already-closed door.

####

Needless to say, there was no trip—Peter just likes to keep me guessing. Or, at least, not a trip that required an airplane. Peter took me sledding at Borderland State Park, which was enough of a drive away it felt like trip, but not so far we couldn't comfortably make it home in the daylight.

After he poured enough coffee in me I felt I could join the rest of the human race we bundled into Walter's car and drove south until we were practically able to navigate ourselves to the best runs from the screams of delight that clustered like a cloud around the hills.

We were the only adults there not required to assist with hygiene and wardrobe difficulties. After Peter made it clear that my eye-rolling and all-purpose mockery would cut no wheedle with him when Fun was at stake, I gave up and tried to catch some for myself. It felt uncomfortable and it made me uncertain, but somehow, Peter made the Fun seem easy and natural, as if flying down a hill at the speed of sound, competing with each other to see who could race down the hill fastest, and jamming each other's head into the snow at the hill's bottom were activities as normal and necessary as breathing.

When I was finally so tired I begged for the next to be the last race, it was late afternoon and most everyone else had gone home. Somehow, the day had flown by. I lost the race, of course—I told Peter even _I_ understood physics enough to know he went down hills faster because he was _bigger_ than me—but he still made me spring for the hot chocolate at the stand set up by a gaggle of girls wearing some kind of club uniform.

Peter gathered the sleds, throwing his snow covered hat and gloves into their bottoms and towing them along behind him towards the nearby frozen pond and I trudged over and behind a smaller hill to get the last two cups of chocolate before the club packed up and went home.

When I came back over the hill, Peter wasn't standing by the frozen pond where I left him. I scanned the park, finally finding him a ways away, over by the road, squatting next to a little girl. His face was smoothed with concentration as he looked up at the girl who was talking earnestly to him.

Something tightened at the base of my head. A febrile rush of dread that squeezed my precognitive senses and chewed at my entrails, even before the silver minivan pulled up behind Peter's turned back.

I was sprinting toward him before my mind began processing what was happening, cups of hot chocolate abandoned, hissing in the snow where I dropped them.

"Peter!" I screamed his name, knowing that the wind and the distance made it impossible to hear me and that no matter how fast I ran, I couldn't cross the area between us soon enough. I knew that black, curly head. The little girl he was talking to was Miriam. The one I wasn't able to bring back when I'd went to save the little boys. The one who hadn't _wanted_ to come back and had slipped away from me.

The van came to a halt and the front doors opened. A pair of Meatheads emerged from the driver and passenger doors simultaneously, like they'd been decanted mechanically. The van's side door slid open.

I was running as fast as I could, but away from the sled runs now, the snow wasn't packed anymore and my feet sunk into the deep snow exponentially further as I tried to get closer to him. Shit, I should have taken the walkways around; it was longer, but it would have been faster in the long run.

"PETER!"

I was close enough this time for Peter to hear me. Just as Peter stood to turn and see who was approaching too fast from behind him, he stopped and his head swiveled at the sound of my voice. I may as well have planned it with the Meatheads. It was just the second they needed, and the next moment #1 was on Peter holding his arms still, while #2 busied himself jamming something into the back of Peter's neck. Peter took two steps in my direction and then slumped backwards into the waiting arms of the Meatheads. They drug him to the van's side door, and while they folded Peter's limp body into the van, Miriam climbed in beside Peter. They slid the door closed, jogged back to the front doors, and pulled away smoothly.

Elapsed time? Probably less than twenty seconds from the instant I noticed that Peter was talking to a little girl.

By the time I got to the road the van was too far away to see the license plate number, not that I harbored much hope it would be helpful. When the van disappeared over the horizon, I stopped running and stood panting in the middle of the road, massaging the stitch in my side that was causing spots to swim in my field of vision. I fumbled for my phone in my coat pocket and made the necessary calls. Then I sat down on the curb alone and focused all my energy on tracking the blank spot of Peter's mind as I felt it slip further and further away.

* * *

><p>When I woke up I could tell, even though the dark fabric bag over my head, that the air around me was damp and mildewy. I was lying on my back. My shoulders burned and my hands were numb from the weight of my body. I willed my fingers to move, curling them up to feel the bonds that held my wrists crossed together behind my back.<p>

Zip-ties. I fucking hate zip-ties. Ever since Jack Bauer made them cool, every thug in the Western Hemisphere keeps them in their bag of tricks, just waiting for the moment they can restrain a captive and pose for a picture for _Goon's Illustrated_ in one fell swoop. Pompous dirtbags. Plastic is much more painful than rope and a hell of a lot harder to get out of.

I rolled my head from side to side, trying to shrug out of the bag that covered my head. When that didn't work I rolled over on my shoulder, a move which sent jagged rivers of pain down my neck and back, and pressed my temple to the floor giving me a pressure point for the bag from under which I could worm my head.

I worked for a while then rested, panting from my now-exposed mouth. Almost halfway there. I pushed up into a seated position re-bruising my hip in the process. Gravity drug the weight of the bag a little further off when I swung myself upright. There was still nothing to see, but my efforts caused me to feel like my head spinning around the axis of my ass, which seemed to be the only thing affixed to the earth. Swaying drunkenly, barely upright, I pressed my knees together, pinched the top-edge of the bag, and flung my head backwards.

Big mistake. I hit the ground again with a thud, falling back again on my compressed shoulders. Pain shot through my right shoulder either shortly before, or shortly after I heard the sickening snap. It's hard to tell whether the injury or the noise begets the nausea when you've dislocated a joint.

"Fuck!" I swore, kicking impotently at the pitted concrete ground, watching the pebbles and dust make a ghostly cloud when they reflected off the miniscule beam of light that cut in from under the door.

I breathed in and out deeply, relaxing as many parts of my body as I could onto the hard and mercifully cold floor, trying to lay as still as possible in an effort to stave off the nausea. Things were shitty enough at the moment. I wanted to avoid the inevitable vomit-covered clothing for as long as I could. I didn't want to revisit my last two meals at least until I got kicked in the stomach, an event that I reasoned, likely figured prominently in my future.

When the black waves of nausea passed enough I felt I could open my eyes, I did. It may have been my perspective, but I was pretty sure the ceiling of the room I was in was not high enough for me to stand in—maybe five feet tall or so. The floor and walls were concrete, and though I couldn't see the whole thing without moving more than I felt able to, the lack of light suggested there probably weren't any windows. Directly in my line of vision was a wooden door that from my sideways angle on the floor looked far sturdier than I would have liked.

Rolling face down and then over onto my relatively uninjured left shoulder I slowly levered myself into a seated position all the while controlling my breathing.

My head was still swimming in an ocean of pain, and the head-rush I experienced as my blood pressure righted itself wasn't pleasant, but it was better than my first attempt since this time I managed to stay upright.

I turned my head carefully from side to side and moved the parts of me that were still movable, testing myself for injuries. Everything except my right shoulder moved more or less in the direction it was supposed to, so my best reckoning was that nothing was broken. I'd been hit on the head as well as drugged if the throbbing at the base of my skull and the slightly metallic taste in the back of my throat was any indication. And there was something wrong with my right ankle too, but it felt like bruised-pain, not broken-pain, so I told myself it would hold my body weight if I got the opportunity to run.

My breathing was loud in the empty room and I tried to quiet it to see what I could hear. I might have heard muffled voices behind the sound of dripping water and what might be seagulls, but it was probably wishful thinking. I wasn't looking forward to meeting my captors exactly, but faced with the possibility that I might be hog-tied and left for dead entirely alone in an abandoned building, I took some comfort from the idea that the dirtbags were a few hundred yards away watching the Patriots game on their mobile televisions.

It's not like it's the first time I've been fettered and forgotten. In the line of work I used to be in, it wasn't necessarily SOP, but it'd happened enough times that I wasn't exactly in foreign territory. One particularly stimulating year in Southeast Asia, I contemplated stitching my own head-bags and carrying them around in my pocket just so I wouldn't have to smell the vomit and halitosis perfumed ones recycled by the minions-du-jour. Some employers are shy, and before they tell you any secrets they want to impress on you how important their privacy is to them. Some of them are bullies and they want to show you how uncomfortably dead they can make you if you don't follow their rules. Others are suspicious and a little curious; before they entrust you with anything that's theirs, they want to see what kind of person you are; they think a couple of days of solitude and some blunt force trauma will reveal the _real_ you. Still others are just plain mean; they want to see how much you can take because they're backward, brutish, and bored. In any case, I recognized that that hallmark of captivity was the special combination of anticipation and solitude; those were the real enemies, so I tried not to let the dread overwhelm me.

I thought about Olivia and almost immediately imagined I could feel her whispering along the back of my skull, but my mind was presently too fuzzy to focus on it. What had happened? The last thing I remember was bullying Olivia into taking a day off with little more than coffee and chutzpah. I hoped to god that whatever happened was to me only. Getting beat on (or worse) myself was one thing. Watching Olivia get beat on was another matter altogether, and not one I was anxious to experience. Knowing that it happened to her in the past when I wasn't around was bad enough, and yet still not at all the same thing as witnessing it.

I heard the tromp of boots outside the wooden door and then the jingling of keys as someone opened one, two, three, four locks. Then I squinted as bright light honed into the gloom of my cell and I could only see the black outlines of one of the dirtbags, standing with his feet apart and his arms on his hips.

He waved his hand in what I took to be a beckoning gesture, which I ignored while I sat there, still on the floor, looking up at him. It probably wasn't a good sign that he didn't address me by name. Either he didn't speak English—a circumstance which could make communication difficult, or he didn't want to get personal because he'd be killing me after they got whatever it was he wanted out of me. Neither prospect was very cheering.

Dirtbag took a half of a step inside the room and gestured more forcefully. He obviously wanted me to follow him, but I just sat there, since I was fairly certain I wouldn't be able to get up unassisted anyway and because I wanted to force him to say _something_ to me.

We stared at each other for a few minutes, not that it bothered me a bit, as I had all the time in the world. He was the one with the schedule; my dance card was currently empty.

He finally caved. "This way," he grunted, repeating his hand-wave for a third time.

I didn't move. It's a Hollywood fantasy that successful captives should attempt to hide their agony from their captors. As if, by enduring the pain silently, the captors will be impressed, and their high opinion of your endurance will prompt them to let you go. Talk to any counter-interrogation specialist and they'll tell you if you're imprisoned it's best to cultivate an impression that you are _worse_ than you actually are. Moan, scream, sob, and holler at the slightest trauma. If you are alive long enough for interrogation of any kind, they want you at least healthy enough to provide useful information. Exaggerate your injuries and you gain access to better food, more rest, less deadly interrogation techniques. Making him drag me up and out of here would heighten the impression that I couldn't walk on my own, that I would tumble over in front of him if I tried, which wasn't all that farfetched since it was what I was pretty sure would happen anyway.

He shook his head and stepped out of the room. Outside the door he turned and looked over his right shoulder, making the same gesture he'd been making at me, presumably to bring another dirtbag into the picture before he stepped all the way into my cell.

I heard two distinct voices murmuring in low tones from the end of the hallway and another tromp of boots, then a second black outline hovered in the doorway in the same stance as the first. At this point I had heard or seen three of them, and I suppressed the urge to sigh out loud as I felt my prospects of escape narrow.

They stepped into the room one right after the other, approached me on either side and hauled me up, each with a hand under my armpits. The planet reeled again and didn't right itself until we were out the door and halfway down a narrow dark hallway. Nearly screaming with frustration through the thick fluff and renewed agony in my head, I tried to focus on my surroundings. The hallway had many closed doors dotting it, all wooden and seemingly identical to the one I woke up behind.

We reached a junction of intersecting hallways. They hoisted me to the right into a very short hallway with a larger door at the end of it. The goons opened the door, then shuffled me through it.

The room was larger than the one I was in. Just inside the door, one of the goons cut the zip ties that held my arms behind my back. Free from their bondage my arms tingled and buzzed. I was just reaching slowly with my left hand to feel how bad my right shoulder was when they bumped, shoved and dumped me into what looked alarmingly like Walter's dental chair, strapping my arms and feet to the rests. When they wrested my right arm into the armrest I groaned. One goon looked at the other curiously. He felt my right arm and shoulder, then, without so much as a flicker on his face, opened his feet wider and in one swift motion, wrenched my shoulder back into its socket. By the time I realized what happened it was over, but that didn't stop me from screaming, and, when the room stopped tilting, swearing colorfully at the goons.

Pain blinkered out conscious thought for a while. After the white spots in my vision faded I turned my head to look around the room. My captors must have used the same decorators as Walter—_Mad Scientist Designs, _or one of their affiliates—although they needed some help with the lighting; it wasn't much less gloomy here than in my cell. The goons had retreated and I sat alone in the middle of the room strapped to the chair. What in the name of Christ is with that anyway? Why is it no matter what I do, it always comes down to me being unwillingly strapped to a semi-reclined, monstrous chair while someone (usually Walter) fucks with my brain or body?

It turns out that being at the center of an inter-dimensional conspiracy is hell on the constitution.

A door opened behind me and I heard the light shuffling of footsteps approaching me. It was a woman, dressed in scrubs, her face covered with a surgical mask. Even around the mask I could see her face had the same schooled impassiveness of the dirtbags. She spent a few moments fiddling with something on a metal tabletop nearby to my left. The she walked over to the door the dirtbags dragged me through. She knocked lightly at the door twice and returned to the tabletop, now rolling it nearer to my chair. I heard her feet tapping on something on the floor and, with a light whirring sound, my chair moved from semi-reclined to completely reclined.

Her knock had summoned the muscle and they both came back in. One stood behind me and strapped my head tightly to the rest with a strap across my forehead and then both of them came over to my left side and flanked the woman. One grabbed my left shoulder and the other gripped my wrist, steadying my already immobile arm.

For the first time, the woman looked directly at me. "You can struggle if you like, but it won't make any difference," she said, her voice quiet and businesslike. "There will be less discomfort if you lie still."

Then the men tightened their grip on my arm and out of the corner of my eye I saw her peel back the wrapping of a IV catheter and tubing, assemble it and begin prodding on the veins of my inner arm with her index finger. She frowned and reached behind her. Pulling out a tourniquet, she nodded at the men, who loosened their grip on me. She wrapped the tourniquet around my bicep. "Make fist please," she commanded, and I did as I was told. I really didn't want to add an embolism to my list of problems.

Surprise flashed in her eyes when she realized I was going to sit still. Still watching out of my peripheral vision, I saw her insert the needle, eject the catheter, flush the tubing, and cap it off with the ease of long practice. She hung a saline drip—I guess they wanted me hydrated when they interrogated me—and retrieved a syringe from the table she had been working from.

She looked at me. "This won't hurt," she said as she injected the contents of the syringe into the port. I suspect she considered her cold, flat eyes professional when they scoured into me.

"What is it?" I tried, though I doubted she would tell me the truth if she told me anything at all.

"Don't worry," she said, and I almost laughed since "worry" didn't quite cover my current emotions. "You won't remember a thing," she added.

As the lights dimmed and I felt consciousness recede I wondered if Walternate's minions had told Olivia the same thing.

* * *

><p>Anyone with any sense or training (or, who has watched TV for that matter) knows that the first 24 hours of an abduction case pretty much determines whether the evening news will feature the joyful, tear-stained faces of the loved ones reuniting with the victim or a sober newscaster reassuring the public that the case is still active, law enforcement is still pursuing leads, and the victim will be home any minute.<p>

Broyles had set up and staffed a war room for Peter's abduction even before I was ferried back to the field office. Now it looked like a rather peculiar war had been waged there. A potpourri of sweats and outerwear draped all about the room, the remnants of a day's worth of food for two dozen agents, a half dozen overflowing trash cans, empty coffee cups, a king's ransom in electronics—laptops, cell phones, tablets, projectors—along with their owners in varying stages of activity, and enough paper—in bags, on desks, in files—to reforest South America.

We'd passed the 24 hour mark four hours ago without even a single lead on Peter's abduction.

_I_ was the only lead, and the only witness, and I was currently out of commission, sitting and concentrating hard on Peter's now-fading consciousness for the past twenty minutes or so from my "area" in the room's corner.

Just about everyone on the team except Broyles and Astrid were now afraid to approach me since, with the charm and perseverance of a manic depressive, I'd spent the last day oscillating wildly between feverish activity and near-catatonia. The frenzied industry I pursued when my mind was free enough for me to skim reports, grill agents fearless enough to forward me new information, and yell at people on my cell phone. The catatonia I saved for when Peter woke up, or emerged from his drugged torpor long enough for me to locate and read him, feel him, catch his stray thoughts, and try to alleviate his fear, although I was pretty sure that wasn't working—he just felt too far away and I couldn't tell if it was actual distance that separated us or something they'd done to him that prevented me from calling him up.

Since I was my usual charming self, I could spot that my behavior would earn me another go-around on the rumor mill. John's bizarre death and my unwitting part in it had earned me turn, not to mention the strange company I kept for the last three years. Not that I gave a good god-damn, but I could see how, looking at it from the outside, my life was the kind of grist that powered the mill. From the inside, of course, Sam Weiss was right: it was a nightmare, and not a very interesting one: just an endless spectacle of calamity and violation against the backdrop of an apocalypse.

Now I was going to add "I see dead people" to the list of my stunning achievements, since the downcast eyes of those around me explained more clearly than words could that these people believed that we had fought the good fight, but Peter was dead, and now they wanted to go home to their families and hot water heaters.

He was still alive—of that I was nearly sure. Although generally speaking, I embrace denial with the kind of fervor that makes suicide bombers look like dabblers, I was virtually certain that the stray bits of Peter I picked up intermittently weren't just wishful thinking.

Of course, my so-called ability didn't do a single fucking thing to help us actually locate Peter, I reminded myself, as Peter slipped out of consciousness again. It only made me more erratic, a fact which was confirmed when even the stalwart Astrid approached me gingerly and stretched out a hand that held coffee far out in front of her, unwilling to get too close to me, in case the madness was catching.

I missed Charlie then with a pang so strong it was physical, and I couldn't stop the tears that sprang into my eyes. I missed his down-to-earth sense, his lewd humor, his quiet support. He'd understood me, _trusted_ me—had been one of the few friends I'd ever had. Charlie had always done more than his fair share of protecting me, and not just from the rumor mill. Everyone liked Charlie, and, for reasons no one else could ever quite work out, Charlie liked me, so my association with him had won me a generosity and a benefit of the doubt from my colleagues I wouldn't have otherwise received.

_Do the work, Liv. Do the fucking work_, I mentally berated myself. Peter was still alive: this I trusted on nothing other than blind faith in my abilities and trust in my connection to Peter. But, logically speaking, at least to the extent that logic figured into my life at all, he was alive and I was fairly certain that some variety of shapeshifters had kidnapped him. It was a dangerous assumption, based on little other than Cassandra's claim that The Secretary had sanctioned a new group of shapeshifters, or Bioengineered Artificial Intelligent life forms if I gave a fuck about Cassandra's politically correct doublespeak, to a clandestine development project. A project I was certain included the abduction of seven year old children, the goal of which I was beginning to suspect was to replicate Peter's whatsit energy field (my description wasn't much clearer than Walter's) to control the machine. They needed him alive to preserve the energy. Instinct rather than reason told me that the machine wouldn't work if Peter was dead, which meant we had a little bit of time, if nothing else. Whatever was happening to him was painful, but it wasn't life-threatening, I could sense. Which wasn't all that reassuring since that could change in an instant and we had shit to go on, but I clung to it all the same.

Astrid sat down next to me, still leaning slightly away from me like I was not to be trusted, which was reasonable, under the circumstances. She had been on Walter-watch for 24 hours, not a job I envied her. I wasn't capable of it; I could barely contain the bubbling cauldron of my own panic, I wasn't equipped to listen to Walter verbalize it endlessly, not if Walter was to remain alive for Peter's triumphant return.

"Olivia," Astrid's voice was gentler even than usual, "have you slept at all?"

I tried not to laugh in her face. Why was everyone in my life preoccupied with my sleeping and eating habits? I shook my head at her, and tried not to roll my eyes, although not all that hard.

Astrid licked her lips nervously. "No, Olivia, . . . uhm, I mean, have you _tried_ sleeping at all?"

What the hell did that mean? I shook my head again, more vehemently this time, trying to indicate that the subject was closed.

But Astrid went on, wringing her hands, looking furtively around at the other agents, lowering her voice and leaning closer to me so we wouldn't be overheard. "I mean, do you think sleeping would make it easier for you to link . . . or . . . you know, with Peter?"

I hadn't thought of that.

Astrid was looking marginally more confident. "Remember, I've been listening to Walter for a day. But I was thinking that maybe if you slept, you might be able to block out all the fear and conscious responsibilities," she smiled faintly at me. "You know, just focus on that."

At the mention of Walter I finally caught up with Astrid. "Astrid, did _Walter_ send you?"

She looked around again, then tugged at my sleeve until I was up and out in the hall. She checked to make sure no one was lurking around before she spoke. "No. Well, not _exactly_." Astrid pulled an envelope out of her pocket which I immediately recognized as the kind Walter used to transport pharmaceuticals out of the lab.

"Sometimes Walter and I play a game. I have him make or do something that seems impossible. It's how I keep him entertained when he's bored, or prevent him from meddling when he shouldn't. We were talking about you and Cortexiphan and your connection to Peter. Walter was complaining that the link between you two could be enhanced, but I discouraged him, telling him neither you or Peter was prepared for that prospect." I wondered how many other flights of Walter- insanity Astrid had protected us from in the last three years. Probably quite a few.

"But Walter wouldn't let it go, so I had him formulate something he thought would enhance your connection, but I didn't bring it round before now, because I really don't know what's in it, what it will do, or even if it will work. But now, Peter has been gone for so long—I just don't know what else to do.

"Can Walter help us?" I asked.

"I don't think so. He's pretty much out of commission—I made him take something to sleep." Astrid stretched the envelope towards me and I took it. "It's a sedative—that much I know—and it's supposed to activate the Cortexiphan in your system somehow—Walter talked a lot about bioavailability."

"Well , what are we waiting for?" I said over my shoulder as I slipped the envelope into my pocket, heading back in the room for my coat. "Let's go."

####

The ride back to my apartment was excruciating. I felt like it was taking forever. Broyles had frowned suspiciously at me when I told him I was going home, since he knew me well enough to know that was ridiculous. But he said nothing, having by now learned that telling me "no" only made me more determined. What he didn't know, Broyles figured, he couldn't be held responsible for.

I _was_ tired, I realized as I climbed my front stairs, not that it made any difference. Inside the outer door to my apartment, I was fumbling for my keys when a voice interrupted me. I reached for my weapon.

"You are a hard woman to find alone." The voice was slurred and scratchy, and Astrid ran into me when I stopped and stared as Cassandra stepped out of the shadows that hung around my apartment door.

Astrid gasped softly behind me when she saw Cassandra's bruised and swollen face in the yellow hallway light. I was numb, certain that for the rest of my life I'd never be able to feel anything again.

"Hello Cassandra," I said. It made a certain kind of black sense that she would show up here now.

I looped Cassandra's arm around my shoulders with about as much feeling as a serial killer exhibits when he disposes of a victim, and used my freehand to jam the keys into the lock to open the front door. Astrid wordlessly stuck her head around Cassandra's other arm and we half walked, half dragged her into my apartment.

Inside, Cassandra staggered to the couch and collapsed on it on her side and I headed into the kitchen for my shopworn first aid kit, shedding my jacket along the way.

When I got back I was armed with the ice packs, damp washcloths and dry towels to dress the wounds as well as mop up whatever fluid she was leaking onto my couch. At least there wouldn't be fresh bloodstains in my apartment. I still hadn't gotten around to cleaning up the stains Peter made during the last round of abuse. Astrid had shed her own coat and thankfully wore a face that looked like she wasn't going to ask a lot of questions.

I kneeled down next to Cassandra and pushed her over so she was on her back. I handed her an ice pack to put wherever she thought it was needed most and began dabbing at the mixture of crusted blood mercury around a nasty gash above left eye.

"What happened?" I asked, steeling myself for her particular brand of misleading double-speak and half-truths.

"I'm a dead woman," she croaked.

"Woman?" I asked. "That's an interesting way to put it."

Her eyes flashed at me through their swollen slits. Then she groaned and gestured at her midsection.

I opened her shirt, thankfully it was a button-up, and she gritted her teeth when I peeled the fabric away from what looked to my untutored eyes like a stab-wound on her left side under her ribs oozing silver mercury.

I wasn't sure what to do about that. I looked at Astrid for help. Astrid little face was set and hard, the compassion I was used to seeing in response to injury notably absent. She glanced at me. "Clean it," she said and her voice clenched tight as her jaw, "then bandage it." She reached into the first aid kit with the authority and composure of a combat medic and handed me the bottle of saline wash and a 4x4 and then set to cutting strips of the medical tape.

"This will sting," I said the instant before I hosed down the wound with the solution. Cassandra eyes flicked my way and then she hissed as the saline flooded the wound until it looked to me like I had dislodged any remaining debris, not that I could see anything particular through the gush of saline and mercury.

Now, cleaned, dressed, and iced, Cassandra propped herself up on one of my couch pillows while I yanked my ponytail holder out of my hair and rubbed my temples.

"What is going on? And why are you here?" I'd done my best to alleviate her suffering, but I was done playing Florence Nightingale. I was going to make her pay for our assistance with information.

"Could I have some water please?"

I fetched it for her, resolving that if I didn't get some answers soon I wouldn't be responsible for my actions. I reached for my hip, feeling the reassuring weight of my weapon. At least after Charlie, now I knew how to kill them.

After she swallowed a few sips of water, I began again. "Do you know where Peter is?" I asked.

She looked up at me over the rim of her glass. "No," she said, "but I know who took him."

"The shapeshifters working on The Secretary's special project?"

She looked away, but I took her silence as affirmation.

"And have your learned the nature of that project?" I asked, fearing I already knew the answer.

She nodded again and took another sip. After swallowing she looked at me again, and I thought I saw a flash of pity in her eyes, but I may have imagined it. "To assemble the machine. To create or locate someone capable of operating it."

"Peter," I said, half to myself.

She nodded again and set her empty glass down on the floor beside the couch. "How much do you know about quantum mechanics?"

I just growled and clenched my jaw at her. Astrid nodded once from her place on the chair.

She folded her hands in front of her on her lap, looking for all the world like a professor I had as an undergraduate, even with the swelling and strangely colored wounds, and began a lecture about as comprehensible to me as one of Walter's, though it lacked the bizarre analogies.

"Time is just a direction in space. And its choices, human choices, navigate the direction of time through space. At any given moment, billions upon billions of people making an infinite number of choices, after which each different choice results in another direction in time, another history."

"An infinite number of histories." I was following her so far, though I missed Peter to talk me through it.

"Yes. Infinity to the power of infinity. But there are certain outcomes that are more probable than others. The probability of any event is reached by summing together all possible histories of that event, every possible path. Each path is represented as a wave. When the magnitude of the changes in the waves are summed, most of them will equal zero. For lack of a better explanation, they cancel each other out. The two universes you have experienced represent the most probable outcomes, the greatest likelihood of the series of events. That's why they resemble each other so closely."

She pulled the blanket off the back of the couch and covered herself with it. "Didn't you ever wonder why the two universes are so similar?" Not especially, but I didn't want to interrupt since I figured every second she talked increased the likelihood that I would garner some information useful for locating Peter.

"The comparatively few outcomes that remain are those that are the most probable. What we experience as reality is only a representation of the most probable direction time takes through space." Cassandra shifted on the couch, probably under the force of my glare.

"Do you understand?" she asked. Only the broad strokes, but it was enough. I nodded.

"But even those few, most probable histories, those most closely related, were never meant to know each other. Never meant to interact. To collide. In all the infinite number of possibilities, never before have the universes known about each other, about the other options."

"So?" Astrid asked, ever succinct.

"You know about the need for balance in both universe, about the instabilities in the fabric of reality that were created when your Walter Bishop took Peter from our side?" Astrid and I nodded, playing dutiful students.

"These two worlds represent the highest probability, the greatest combination of choices that are reasonably similar. But when Walter took Peter from the other side, he didn't just wreck the balance between the two realities, he also changed the series of events that makes these realities what they are—the events that make that history probable. Each side is probable precisely because in one of them Peter lives to adulthood and in the other he dies as a child. To have him exist in both worlds destroys the outcome necessary that makes that reality exist in the first place."

"When Walter brought Peter here, he destroyed the line of events that makes this universe probable in the first place. He changed the outcome, and in doing so he negated both universes likely outcomes. Doing that wrecks their very probability, and risks making one or both of them disappear as if they never existed," Astrid said.

If I were honest with myself, disappearing entirely didn't sound all that bad to me at the moment. A consuming, fiery death followed by sweet oblivion.

"Wait a minute," I said, "You make it sound as if this has already happened. As if you already know the outcome."

"Well, not exactly, but close enough. Time is just another direction in space, so theoretically, the choice has been made an infinite number of times before.

"What choice?"

"Peter's," she said, like that explained a damned thing.

"What do you mean?" Now I was panicking, but trying not to show it.

Peter is the lynchpin of both universes. Whichever universe he chooses can return to its course, regain its status as a history of probable outcomes."

"And the other?"

"The other one will cease to exist, just as if it never was in the first place."

"How?"

"Wherever Peter is when the series of events swing far enough away from its probable course, that one will pull apart and disintegrate."

I glared at her skeptically, but it didn't deter her. " Really, it's just another choice. Peter will have to make this choice. And he _will_ choose. Not to choose is to choose. Finding another alternative is a choice. Peter chooses, and that choice determines the path of both universes. Destruction or survival, all choices just another direction in space. A choice he has made an infinite number of times before. The outcome of which have played out the same infinite number of times."

My brain hurt with all the possibilities swirling around in it. I decided to focus on the here and now. Peter may have to choose which universe will survive, and I didn't relish being the one to tell him that, but right now we were at a point at which he wasn't going to be able to make the choice because he was imprisoned by the soldiers from the Other Side who wanted to commandeer his choice for themselves.

"Why is this happening?" I asked. I wasn't sure I was going to get an answer, but I decided to ask anyway.

Cassandra shrugged and looked out into my kitchen, a small smile playing at the corner of her mouth. "I don't know. Fate, maybe, if you believe in that sort of thing?"

"Do you?"

She looked back at me, her eyes shadowed by a sadness I didn't think a shapeshifter could feel. "Why not? There are so many things either of our sciences can't explain. So many things that can't be understood. What's left? God, or . . ."

"Fate," I finished for her, and she had the audacity to smile at me with pride, like I was a pet she'd taught to use the dinnerware.

"Why are you telling us this?"Astrid asked, because she always asks the questions viewers want answered.

"Because what the Other Side is doing is wrong. Every bit as wrong as when your Walter crossed universes and took Peter. They are taking from Peter what, by rights, should be his. We all have firsthand experience with how decisions can have unintended consequences. What if capturing Peter and making him choose the Other Side disrupts what is supposed to happen even further? A friend of mine once said "Physics is a Bitch," and I worry about poking that Bitch more than necessary."

"I have another friend," she continued, speaking slowly as if language were new to her and she was having difficulty finding the right words. "A friend who isn't supposed to get involved and yet has—" she paused, "—insight into the nature of these kinds of quandaries."

"You have a lot of friends," I commented. "What is your part in all of this?"

"You're working for someone," Astrid said, rendering me speechless with her insight.

"You are astute for a sidekick," Cassandra observed. Astrid didn't look amused at Cassandra's humor and her lips pressed into a thin line. "Perhaps. Nevertheless, the information I'm giving you, whatever my reasons for sharing it, is reliable and the kind of information you aren't likely to get anywhere else."

She was being less cryptic than usual, and I was inclined to believe her. Still, if we couldn't find Peter, none of this would matter.

"I've been made and I've not long to live," she said, sounding for all the world like an undercover officer in an bad television drama. "No one can protect me now."

I wasn't offering protection, but I decided not to volunteer that. I looked at Astrid. "Now what?"

The look she gave Cassandra could have withered ripe fruit on the vine, "Now," she said, "we find Peter."


	7. Chapter 7

**Sum over Histories**

by MVariorum

**Summary**: Olivia comes back. Olivia and Peter save the world. Again.  
><strong>Categories<strong>: Romance; Adventure; Smut  
><strong>Pairings<strong>: Peter/Olivia  
><strong>Rating<strong>: M. So kiddies, the faint of heart, and those with refined taste should scoot along elsewhere. You have been warned.  
><strong>Story Notes<strong>: Please accept my preemptive apologies for the pseudo-pseudoscience. Not a scientist. Sadly, I'm not even a pseudoscientist. Never will be.  
><strong>Disclaimer<strong>: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.  
><strong>Chapters<strong>: ?  
><strong>Completed<strong>: No  
><strong>Spoilers<strong>: AU after early season 3 (more or less around _Do Shapeshifters Dream of Electric Sheep?). _Includes some elements of the early part of Season 3, but no spoilers beyond that.

Thank you to all who reviewed, favorite, and alerted. A big warm thank you to my beta, starg8fans, for reading this monster and encouraging me through it!

**Chapter 7 / ?**

My existence had shrunk to the size of a chair in the middle of a dim room. I had lost all sense of time and purpose and still they hadn't asked me any questions, hadn't asked me to do anything, which, as it turned out, was a good thing, since at this point I would have sold my soul for a chance at a few pain-free moments with a confidence and depravity that would have made Dr. Faustus look like a misguided boy scout.

The only indication of time I had was the regular changing of the fluid bag that flowed a steady stream of vitamins and balanced electrolytes into my veins. By the number of empty bag changes and my rapidly deflating endurance, I estimated I had been in the chair for close to a full day, not that any of those indicators were remotely reliable.

The dirtbags disappeared shortly after they'd held me still long enough for one of the nurses to strip me and place a catheter, an indignity that barely registered by the time it was applied, and then dump me unceremoniously back in the chair and strap me back down.

Two nurses took turns, changing shifts every few hours by my estimation, but they looked the same. They wore the same colorless scrubs and masks on their blank, impassive faces. The procedure remained the same too. Strapped by my extremities to the chair, I was subjected to what felt like the most ill-conceived acupuncture procedure imaginable. Hundreds of needles punctured essentially every part of my exposed body, clustering together in a number of key areas, indicated by the fact that nurses focused on these areas, wiggling needles at regular intervals while studying the results reported on several laptops around the room. The needles themselves weren't the problem, though. It was the electricity attached to them that was. They were wired to small boxes which were in turn wired to a large box connected to the computers, then jolts of electricity skittered through the wires into my nerve endings at random intervals and intensities with no rhyme or reason I could guess.

They had given me something for pain, but it barely took the edge off the lightest of the shocks. It also frustrated me, clouding my head to the point that I was convinced the radiating shocks would follow me the rest of my life—that no breath would ever be pain-free again. In the beginning, I'd tried everything: reason, compassion, threats, and tears, but learned quickly that nothing moved them, nothing cracked their mannequin faces or interrupted the relentless twisting of dials that delivered the waves of pain, leaving me breathless and broken.

I wish I could say I was manly and strong, that I clung to memories of my identity or my loved ones, but without any knowledge of what they wanted from me, with no communication whatsoever, I had nothing to fight against, no object at which to direct my anger. I remembered reading once about an experiment where two groups of dogs were given a series of shocks. One group was able to stop the shocks by pressing on a button. The other group sometimes could stop the shocks by pressing a button and sometimes pressing the button only increased the shocks. After a certain amount of time the dogs in the second group stopped trying altogether and just lay still trembling and whimpering, having lost the ability to imagine a life without shocks, a life in which they could control their destinies. The experiment is meant to demonstrate learned helplessness—and in this case, I was the second group of dogs.

The tests were clearly neither personal nor punitive. No one gathered around to watch me suffer and no one promised to make the pain stop if I gave them something in return. Whatever it was they wanted from me, they were getting through the engine of the tests, so who I was, indeed, the fact that I was a person at all, was of no consequence. I fundamentally didn't matter—I could have been a houseplant or a loaf of bread for all the interest that was shown for me as an individual.

This is how I learned they were shapeshifters, and ones on an important mission indeed. I caught snatches of conversations when the nurses exchanged places: _electromagnetic_, and _frequency_, _amplitude_ and _magnitude_, but none of it penetrated my cotton-wool stuffed brain.

Even under the best of circumstances our link didn't allow me to read Olivia's mind the way she could read mine, but even without that I could feel her hurtling towards me with the released energy of a tectonic event, rolling in my direction with the implacable wrath of a tsunami. Before the tsunami hits though, the trough must be abided, the drawback endured, so endure it I did, and the effort commanded the last vestiges of my energy when all I wanted to do was give up, give in, and surrender to the blankness and oblivion of pain.

_Hurry, Olivia_, I prayed with the kind of reverence most people reserve for talking to God. _Hurry_.

* * *

><p>Driving towards East Boston I sat in the middle of the backseat and was slung back and forth between two agents as different in appearance as it was possible to be. One was slim and fair, with wavy hair and pale eyes. He looked like a classics professor, only needing a tweed sweater and pipe to clench between his teeth to complete the look. The other man was a burly Latino. He looked like the man you called when you needed to move a large appliance up several flights of stairs. They both had a fondness for bickering though, and I silently listened to them complain as we drove through the city—about the weather, the late hour, the crappy coffee at the field office. But when we got to the edge of the tunnel I'd had enough, so I removed both my primary and backup weapons from their holsters and began to noisily check and recheck their clips on my lap. They both shut up long enough to eye me nervously, making eye contact with each other silently over my bent head.<p>

I should have driven with the HRT unit we'd brought in case Peter was there to rescue. They, at least would have the sense to shut the hell up before a raid, but their AIC didn't know me, though most of the agents did. When he'd frowned on it, I went with Broyles, figuring he'd get us to the site sooner, anyway.

I'm not sure where Broyles picked up the two stooges flanking me. They must have belonged to the lead-stooge sitting next to him in the front seat. I think they were somehow responsible for the tip that led us to where Peter was being held and they wanted to shoulder in on the credit for Peter's recovery.

Broyles had called me about the tip only seconds before I'd swallowed Walter's mystery concoction. Someone had spotted strange comings and goings in an abandoned waterfront property in East Boston. When the local LEO's investigated, they'd spotted the silver minivan. At that point, the FBI took over. We'd called off the locals and deployed our own team—the HRT agents, while Broyles, me and the three stooges followed in our own transport.

The stooges were annoying, but they afforded a welcome distraction that unloading and reloading my clips couldn't provide. I didn't know what we were going to encounter at the warehouse where the van had been sighted. Peter might be there or he might already be long gone, either somewhere else in this world or transported to the Other Side. Or, equally probable, he was already dead.

I jammed my weapons back into their holsters and gripped my thighs to keep my hands from shaking. I'd never given any concerted thought to the fact that Peter might be dead. A world without Peter was one too blank and colorless to imagine. For the bulk of the time we'd known each other we'd been far apart for one reason or another, but that didn't mean that even in our most extreme separation, I didn't know he was out there, even if he was too distant to touch. For a long time now, Peter had been the only conscience I had access to, the only voice in my head not howling with confusion and rage. I knew myself well enough to know I couldn't keep moving that rubber tree plant without him inside me to whisper reason, petition sympathy, and promise redemption. If that were taken away, I wasn't sure I could stop myself from brushing with a 9mm round and defend my position to God about it later on.

The car skidded to a halt next to a crumbling warehouse with wooden doors suspiciously new and sturdy-looking. Now was not the time to indulge in dramatic self-pity I scolded myself as I scrambled out of the backseat behind the stooges. I waited for the HRT unit to uncork themselves from the back of their windowless van before I followed, leaving Broyles and the other agents behind. I jogged behind the team at a sensible distance since, until I had positive confirmation that Peter was dead, I did not have a death wish as such.

Waiting with the team at the front door, I heard an explosion and then the rapid repeat of gunfire as part of the team blasted through he warehouse's back door. More gunfire and another explosion, then I was following my part of the team through the hole where the front door used to be, scrambling over debris and choking on dust and the stench of mildew that only comes from sitting unused for decades by the sea.

Through a small front room and down a dark hallway I followed them before they rammed through a larger door at the end of the hallway and I saw the helmet lights of the other half of the team from across a large room.

The room was windowless and dim with the kind of décor that would have made a fifteenth-century dungeon look warm and cheerful by comparison. Lining the walls was enough medical equipment to furnish a medium-sized ER, along with a number of laptops and a pile of suspicious looking small, dial-covered boxes attached to wires.

In the middle of it all, Peter lay naked in a chair that looked mightily like the one I sat in to get my hair trimmed, although this one reclined.

While the agents swarmed around me looking for hidden minions and securing the premises, I stood frozen to the spot, staring at Peter's motionless body, too horrified to move in case the damage was more severe up close. In that moment, I really didn't want to know, found myself positively unable to confront the possibility of destruction and loss so overwhelming I thought it would swallow me whole and ferry me straight to hell, which surely couldn't be any worse than where I was right now.

I finally drilled up the nerve to get closer and, like during every other catastrophe in my life, necessity commanded me. I pulled myself together and I got through it.

Up close I could see that Peter's entire body was covered with livid, mulberry colored bruises that made him look like he'd been run through an industrial dryer cycle with a pair of cinderblocks. Closer still, and I could see that his body was covered in tiny needles which protruded angrily from every part of his body. The needles were connected to wires which in turn were connected to a number of boxes which rested in his lap and next to him on the chair.

With a shaking hand I reached instinctively to remove the needles, wanting to sweep all the equipment off of him in one enraged swipe.

"Stop there!" A voice called, commanding enough that I both heard and listened. "Don't touch anything!"

An HRT agent carrying a medical kit rushed up next to Peter, batted my hands away, and shouldered me aside, stretching his arms out wide next to Peter to protect him with his body. He spared me an nasty glance and then fumbled at a few of the boxes near Peter, looking over his shoulder at the equipment along the walls.

After taking a few seconds to assess the situation, he growled and turned to face me. "Don't touch _anything_," he snarled at me, "unless you want to kill him," before he rushed over to the laptops and beginning to move and click, rapidly shutting computers down. I watched him, grateful for about the fiftieth time that day Broyles had thought to deploy the HRT unit. Evidently there was nothing they weren't trained for.

When the last computer was off and unplugged, he went over to a large box that was connected to the computers, and, I finally realized, connected to the boxes on Peter's chair by a long cord that ran half the length of the room. The agent glanced at Peter nervously and then pulled the plug that connected Peter from the larger box. When Peter didn't catch fire or explode, he breathed deeply then returned to Peter's side.

"Move," he said to me, and I did to stand at the top of Peter's head, since I realized I was no help, and if Peter was still alive he would need all the help he could get.

I watched in torment as he carefully removed the wires clipped to the needles in Peter's body, and then slowly withdraw the needles one at a time, placing them in a sharps container he produced from the kit. He started with Peter's head, and after what seemed like an endless amount of time when he moved onto his body, I gathered up the will to speak. "Can I touch him?" I asked in a voice that would need to go up a few notches in volume to make a whisper.

The agent frowned, concentrating on removing one of the needles before he glanced at me when he was finished. I must have looked ravaged enough that his face cleared for a minute and compassion softened his words, "You can touch the places I've removed the needles."

I nodded and sucked in a much-needed breath, realizing I hadn't been breathing much at all since I spotted Peter in the middle of the room. I reached a trembling hand to touch Peter's forehead. It was still warm. In the last few months, I'd entered into a non-aggression pact with God; I promised to do what I could to save the world from destruction if God promised to end the abuse when it was over. Now I amended the agreement to include that Peter would survive the ordeal.

When the Agent finished his torso and moved on to his lower extremities Peter moaned softly and stirred. He opened an eye and peered up at my upside-down face. A crooked smile rearranged the bruises on his swollen, purple face. He squinted up at me through the only eye that could open, "Olivia?" his voice rasped out raw and distorted, "Took you long enough."

Leave it to Peter to try to be cute at a time like this.

####

We met Astrid and Walter back at the hospital. Considering the number of times I'd visited there for one reason or another in the last three years I'd considered getting a parking pass to cut down on expenses. We waited together for over an hour on the plastic chairs of the ER's waiting room, Walter wringing his hands and muttering, Astrid trying to soothe him by murmuring to him in low tones, and me sitting silently staring straight ahead while my ass grew numb from the chairs.

It was hard to imagine there was anyone in _more_ critical condition than Peter, but this was a major metropolitan area, so anything was possible. When the frazzled ER doctor emerged from behind swinging doors, called Peter's name, and explained that he was stabilized, I wanted to sob with relief.

We were all ushered to Peter's bedside in a curtained area of the ER and we jammed ourselves in shoulder-to-shoulder to stare down at him.

"The doctor has given him a sedative so he can rest," Walter said, and his voice was so full of woe, even I felt a little sorry for him. He plucked at Peter's hand and then knelt down next to the bed and brought Peter's hand to the side of his face so he could sob openly. Astrid rubbed Walter's back and kept reassuring him that Peter would be fine.

We stood there for a while with nowhere to sit and nothing to do until I saw Broyles smooth head in the doorway raising his eyebrows at me to come talk to him.

I gave Peter a last glance and then joined him in the hallway outside the waiting room.

Four shapeshifters were dead at the scene, two who looked like the muscle and two who conducted the medical procedures.

"Aside from the fact that they were continuously shocking him," Broyles was saying, "we don't know what was done to Peter or why."

I nodded numbly. "I'll get Walter on it, just as soon as I can decamp him from Peter's bedside and get him into the lab."

Broyles nodded and then his face took on the grievous look of someone who had to complete an odious task. "Dunham, I know this is personal now," he said, even though he looked past me to the end of the hall. "I'm sorry about this. About everything."

Broyles didn't know the half of it. Not only did he threaten the lives of every man, woman, and child in both universes, but The Secretary had smashed the spun-sugar truce Peter and I had struggled so desperately for since I got back. I was not only going to kill the Secretary with my bare hands, I was going to do it slowly, maximize his pain, and savor every minute of it. I wasn't going to tell Broyles any of that though, so I settled for a simple nod.

Broyles looked pained again, like he wanted to say something else, but didn't quite know how to go about it. I took pity on him. "So you'll send everything back to the lab, then?" I asked to get the conversation back on professional grounds.

Relief flickered in his eyes and he nodded. "Yes. And some guards for protection." I nodded again to show him I understood.

"Call me when it's all there," I said before I turned away. "Then I'll send Walter to get to work."

Nothing much had changed at Peter's bedside when I returned. I drug a chair from the hallway into his room with me this time and even though it pushed out the curtain into the adjacent patient's space, I placed it next to Peter's bed and motioned Walter to sit in it.

I went and collected coffee for all of us, unwilling to sit vigil next to the unconscious Peter with an audience. I returned with the coffee and handed two cups off to Astrid for her and Walter. The I went back into the hall to make some calls. By the time I got back, a nurse was there explaining that Peter would be admitted and moved to his own room.

When the three of us were sent back out to wait in the waiting room while Peter was prepped to be moved, I tried to persuade Walter that the best place for him was in the lab, trying to figure out what was done to Peter and why. Walter protested and we argued until finally, frustrated beyond belief, I snapped, "Walter, I can't do anything else for Peter. I found him. That's _my_ job. Now you have to figure out what experiments were done to him and why. That's _your_ job." Walter's face fell and I felt lousy, so I took a deep breath and managed to choke out, "Walter, if I could go and do science things so you could stay here with him, don't you think I would?"

Walter must have sensed that my very last nerve was fraying so he pressed his lips together and jerked his head away from me. "You're right, my dear. I know you are." Walter ran a hand across his cheekbones in defeat, a gesture that looked so much like Peter's that for a moment I had to concentrate to breathe.

"I just— I just don't want him to wake up alone," Walter said wretchedly.

"Walter," I promised, "I won't leave his side."

* * *

><p>For the first time in what felt like ever, I was floating on a cottony cloud of bliss. The pain was gone, as was the fear and uncertainty. I was warm and laying down somewhere soft. Except for the hot and heavy weight on my left hand, I was more perfectly content than I can ever remember being.<p>

I didn't want to open my eyes and let the happiness escape in case I was never able to catch it again.

But I did open my eyes. When I did, I perceived florescent lights competing with the sunlight coming in from the windows: a hospital, I registered when I felt the super-starched sheets on my bare ass and my semi-reclined position. When I looked down to find out what was pinning my hand to the bed so thoroughly, I saw the top of Olivia's sleeping head, her body bent awkwardly at the waist, so that part of her was perched on a hard hospital chair pulled right up to the edge of the bed and part of her rested on my hand.

I moved to touch her with my other hand and found I couldn't when that arm strained against IV tubing, now, thankfully, in my right arm. My movement woke Olivia up and she sat up abruptly. I watched her face as her mind caught up with the newest set of calamities. Peter. Abducted. Injuries. Hospital. Each realization clicked across her face in even time. When she caught up to the moment, she glanced down at my puffy left hand which was now creased with the lines from her face on top of the swelling and bruising.

She brushed her hand across the back of mine, like she was trying to erase her imprint. "God, I must have fallen asleep. Did I hurt you?"

Pins and needles buzzed in my left hand, but it was minor on the scale of growing pain now skewering through my body. Whatever they gave me must be the good stuff though. The pain was present, but it no longer left me breathless, and I was floating on the kind of feel-good cloud that only comes from serious opiates.

"No," I said, smiling at her. "Where've I been?" I asked, thinking that between the drugs and the company, I'd never felt better. Until Olivia slid her hand into mine, and then I thought I could fly somewhere on my own.

"East Boston. In a warehouse. By the Harbor." Each phrase was a separate sentence, spoken with long pauses between them in an effort to see how much of my memory was in place.

Still smiling I told her, "I thought I could smell water and hear gulls." She just nodded.

"When do I get out of here?" I asked.

"Maybe tomorrow." She gestured toward the IV on the other side of the bed. "But you'll need to go straight home. No work."

"Says the woman who has almost 6 months of vacation saved up."

She ignored my admittedly lame effort at humor. "You are in good condition, considering. They kept you hydrated and nourished. The bruising looks appalling, but is mostly superficial. You get IV painkillers for 24 hours to help with the pain. They say there is going to be a lot more of it." She was still holding my hand gently like it might crack if she squeezed too hard or moved to suddenly. "Do you remember what happened to you?" she asked.

"Bad, bad acupuncture," I told her. She nodded again.

"Can I have a drink?" I asked.

She stood up and reached across at the end of my bed to a table and brought a plastic hospital cup complete with straw to my mouth. As I drank she asked, "Cold enough?" I gave a little nod, but kept drinking, hoping to erase what was surely the world's most spectacular case of cotton mouth.

"Walter?" I asked, when I was done drinking.

"Back at the lab." She put the cup back on the table and sat back down on the chair. "There was a lot of data. A lot of equipment. They were doing something specific to you. Walter and Astrid are figuring it out. Assisted by a half-dozen, now appalled and terrified agents Broyles assigned."

"Walter made you do hospital duty." I knew how much she hated that—hated hospitals in general—but especially when there was work to be done, keeping her here cooped up was the worst kind of torture.

"I don't mind," she said simply. And for some reason I got the feeling she was telling me the truth.

I shifted uncomfortably in the bed. She looked at her watch. "It's time for your next dose of meds."

"Will it put me out again?"

"Yes." She reached across me for the nurse call button. "That's what they're for."

The pain was gathering momentum, but I didn't want to leave just yet. I put my hand on her arm. "Just a minute. Just sit here with me for a bit, okay?"

"I'm not going anywhere. I promised Walter."

Then she looked at me, and I don't know if she realized it or not, but for a moment her face was so open and unguarded, a heavy ache that had nothing to do with my recent ordeal hollowed out my midsection. I could see the fear that always loitered in the back of her eyes as well as the dragging worry that had always been there, at least since I'd known her. They'd carved out fine lines around her eyes and mouth, lines that hadn't been there when I first saw her in that hotel, what now felt like at least three lifetimes ago, though it had barely been three years.

The nurse came on time anyway, an enormous, burly man with a booming voice and a hearty smile. "Well, Mr. Bishop, I see you're awake. Let's see what we can do about that." He held up a syringe.

Olivia started to stand up, but I gripped her arm, which was the only part of her close enough for me to reach. As the nurse ejected the contents of the syringe into the IV, I tugged a little, pulling her closer.

As she bent towards me, I sat up to meet her. Her eyes flickered uncomfortably toward the nurse the second before I jammed my lips into hers with more enthusiasm than finesse. Reclined in the bed, pinned by the hospitals tubes and wires I had no purchase or force so I couldn't deepen the kiss the way I wanted to, but Olivia's dry lips moved against mine purposefully enough for me to absorb the day-old coffee and Olivia taste from her mouth.

It was enough, I thought, as I drifted off on a magic carpet ride of painkillers.

* * *

><p>It was closer to three days before Peter came home. The day following his rescue, he'd spiked a fever for no discernable reason and the doctors kept him around for another twenty-four hours to make sure there was nothing about the fever that was likely to make him dead.<p>

Which was why he was mean as a snake right now while we sat here in his hospital room waiting for the powers that be to remove his IV, release him, and let him get dressed. Walter had already gone home to get the house ready for Peter's return, and, I suspected to finish cooking what from his descriptions sounded like an eight course meal he'd prepared in Peter's honor.

"I'm just saying, what the hell _else_ could they be doing?"

"Taking care of sick people?" I tried, though I doubted logic would improve his mood.

Peter snorted, but he winced, and I could tell that the motion pained him.

I just studied him from the plastic chair that had molded my ass into a brand new shape over the last three days. "You are going to be a difficult patient, aren't you?"

Peter stood up, leaning heavily on the walker a perky PT assistant had brought him and shown him how to use earlier that morning. Even her lush lips and excellent rack hadn't been enough to soothe his temper when he'd learned that if he wanted to walk at all, it would be with "that contraption" as he deemed it.

When he saw I was looking at the walker, he snorted again, though I noticed with less force than before. "This thing is for an eighty year-old," he bitched, even though he knew I could see that a large portion of his body weight rested on it.

"You want to walk don't you?" I asked mildly.

"When did you get so goddamned even-tempered?" he snarled at me.

I bared my teeth at him. "About the time you became such an jackass."

He had the grace to look ashamed. "I'm sorry," he said, "it's just that I hurt, and I want to get the hell _out of here_!"

I took pity on him. "Look, why don't we go ahead and get you dressed? I think we can get the gown off and everything but your shirt on around the IV. Maybe by then the nurse will be here with your discharge papers."

He looked at me like I'd suggested we bury a body in his backyard. "Olivia, I am not going to let you _dress me_! I realize I'm now an invalid for the foreseeable future, but I draw the line right there," he stabbed his index finger in the direction of the clothes Walter had brought him from home piled at the end of his hospital bed.

"Alright, dress yourself, then," I said shrugging my shoulders. "Too bad, though," I said, making a show of getting up and heading towards the door, "it could be fun."

I watched his brow furrow as he struggled to switch gears from feeling sorry for himself to the prospect of Getting Some. It must have been the drugs, because he was almost too slow on the uptake. Another second and I would have passed him by and left him alone in the room. At the last moment, his arm darted out and snatched mine. In a move that must have pained him a great deal, he let himself fall back so he was seated on the bed as he pulled me toward him until I was standing between his legs. His free hand shoved the walker out of my way. He dug his face into my torso and put his arms around me.

"I _am_ a jackass," he said into my stomach. He looked up at me and I tried not to let the shock of seeing his mottled face up close show on my own. "Thank you for coming to get me," he said, and I would have believed he was sincere, if his fingers weren't already creeping up under my shirt.

"The mood you're in, I should have made you take the bus home." He nodded, his contrition belied by his still north-moving fingers and now his thumbs stroking the bottom of my ribcage, just close enough to my breasts to tease.

I hadn't planned on having sex with him in his hospital room just to keep him entertained, but I wasn't sure how long I'd be able to put him off.

Correction, I discovered as the languor of desire seeped into my limbs when he finally flipped his hands palm up to barely cradle my breasts which on cue felt swollen and heavy. I'm not sure how long I could put _myself_ off. I've had my share of lovers, good ones even. But there is something about Peter, he doesn't even have to touch me. One sly look, one glimpse at the fire licking along the backs of his eyes and I needed him like an addict needs her next fix. It was probably pheromones or some semi-scientific principle Walter would explain in cringe-worthy detail if I let him, not that I ever would.

Thankfully, that was the moment the nurse came in with a stack of papers and the equipment to remove Peter's IV. She was scribbling notes on a notepad as she walked into the room, so she missed the triumphant look Peter gave me as he reluctantly took his hands away, making sure to palm my belly and waist on the way down.

I backed away, trying not to suck in air too obviously as the nurse, still looking at her notepad, moved between us. She didn't move in fast enough for me to miss Peter's sideways grin, though. His lethal, swaggering grin, the one that made it hard for me to decide whether I wanted to bury my heel in his face or my tongue in his mouth. And he knew it too.

"Jackass," I mouthed over the nurse's shoulder where it was bent removing his IV. He just grinned wider.

* * *

><p>"Move over." My mouth was suddenly dry in a way that had nothing to with my drug regimen, and even force of habit wasn't enough to move me to do Olivia's bidding when she was standing half undressed in my bedroom doorway, her body a black outline against the yellow hallway nightlight.<p>

After Walter's celebratory dinner and a number of convivial drinks, which I abstained from, it became clear as the evening advanced and Olivia drank more than her fair share that she was going to stay the night.

I'd let Walter escort me upstairs himself more than an hour ago—a process that was embarrassingly slow and painful. By the time I heaved myself up the last set of stairs. I was exhausted and sore and I could count on the fingers of one hand the very few things I wanted more than I wanted my bed. I even let Walter help me into bed because he so clearly needed the reassurance of his June Cleaver routine. But in bed, though I was tired, I couldn't help but keep track of the movements of the people downstairs. I listened as Astrid and Shannon left, the dishes were schlepped from the dining room into the kitchen, and Walter's feet moved slowly up the stairs telling me that the evening was over and he'd gone to bed.

I still didn't move, even when she came into the room, closing the door behind her and crouched down next to my bed.

"Are you going to move or do I have to sleep on the floor?" She tilted her head and leaned her upper body on the mattress so her face was just a few inches from mine.

I rolled over onto my back trying to scoot over, but the pain and exhaustion made me slow, and I thrashed around on the mattress, helpless as a stranded fish, trying to find the best way to clear a space for her that would exert the least amount of energy and cause me the least pain. Olivia stood up, waiting for me, and the smooth expanse of both her thighs so close to my face made it difficult for me to concentrate. She leaned over, creating an aneurysm-popping view down her tank and shoved both her hands under me, one under my torso and the other under my shoulder, and in a second I was skimming across the sheets, vacating enough space that she could slide in next to me.

Somehow she had managed to lever me across the bed without causing me any discomfort, with about as much effort as it would take her to raise a cup of coffee to her lips. In my next life, I really wanted to roll her Strength and Constitution.

She stretched out next to me so we were facing each other, but stayed several inches away not touching me. I was tired and ill, but I'd never in my life been so debilitated that a bedful of warm girl couldn't revive me, especially when she smelled like Olivia's intoxicating combination of plain soap and peril.

When I reached across the space separating us to put a hand on her waist and drag her closer, she blocked me, moving my arm away, but grabbing my hand and wrapping it in hers to soften the rejection.

"Uh-uh," she said, "just here for sleep."

"You could do that on the couch," I told her, hoping I sounded seductive, though I suspected I sounded more like a drunk in the seconds before he loses consciousness. That shut her up, but only for a minute.

"It's warmer up here," she said as she shifted to get comfortable, though she left her hand where it was around mine. I couldn't argue with that. Now the phantom furnace problem had made it so that in order for the rest of the house to be a livable temperature, my room was as hot and muggy as the Everglades in August. "Want me to go sleep with Walter?" she added.

I didn't justify that with an answer. We laid there quietly for a few minutes but she didn't move and I could tell she wanted to say something but didn't know how to begin.

"What's on your mind Dunham?" I asked, but I'd already had a very full day, and my most recent dose of painkillers made my voice sound like it was coming from far away. Olivia snuggly and confiding was so very rare that I really wanted to take advantage of it, but the little remaining energy I had was being funneled into keeping my eyelids separated.

"Nothing that can't wait until tomorrow," she said, and I could hear an uneasiness in her voice that would have set my mental alarm bells to clanging if most of my brain cells hadn't already been swallowed by the Percocet.

Olivia pulled our entwined hands toward her and the last thing I remember was feeling the soft skin of her cheek against the top of my hand.

####

Olivia was gone by the time I woke up the next morning. Probably already off to work if the light coming in the windows was any indication. I fuzzily remembered waking in the middle of the night, my body heated and agonized, to her cool hands handing me more pills to swallow with the glass of cold water she brought to my lips.

When I rolled over, there were two more Percocet on the night table, along with a glass of water, sweating and only slightly warm. Next to them was a note in Olivia's serial killer scrawl letting me know that my night time dose was at 3:15 am. Squinting at the clock that read almost 9:00, I estimated that I could safely take them without doing any damage to my respiratory functions or my liver.

I swallowed them and laid back down, noticing that Olivia had draped my jeans, a clean shirt, underwear and socks across the handles of the walker on my side of the bed. I could live without the help with personal hygiene, but Olivia's brand of no-nonsense tending was surprisingly accomplished, not to mention satisfying.

I laid in bed and dozed for another hour or so an then decided to get up. Walter was already gone, probably off to the lab with Olivia to figure out what my captors had been so anxious to get they needed a human-sized pincushion. I really wanted to join them, but the Percocet made everything pleasantly fuzzy around the edges and wiped me clear of any directed intention. When I decided to get dressed and go downstairs it felt like a major commitment.

Twenty minutes later I was dressed, although panting and leaning heavily on my walker even though I was sitting on the edge of my bed. Dressing proved to be not only harder and more exhausting, but also more demoralizing than I'd anticipated, I realized as I looked at the bruises that, if anything were darker and more painful looking than yesterday. I decided afterwards, that I'd earned myself a little catnap.

By one o'clock, I had made it downstairs, but I was ready to climb the walls; by five thirty when I heard Walter and Olivia come through the door I was damned near stir-crazy, and almost screamed with relief to see another human being. Walter had gotten me a stack of DVD's at the library, but I'd already watched two of them and I was still as bored as I can ever remember being. I'd left the only book in the house I hadn't read upstairs, but I wasn't about to climb the stairs to get it.

Walter rushed over to me as soon as he was in the door, not even taking a moment to shed his coat.

"How are you feeling?" Walter asked, practically bouncing up and down on the couch to see that I'd managed to make it through a whole day without serious injury.

"Like a rat in a maze. A drugged rat. Who's been run over by a car."

Walter's smile faded a little. "I'm fine Walter," I amended when I realized he was serious. When he just sat there, waiting for me to elaborate, I added, "I took my last dose of Percocet almost 4 hours ago. I only had to take one, which I bumped with an Extra Strength Tylenol. I don't think I'll need to take any more until bedtime."

Walter just stared at me, like I was speaking in a foreign language whose classes he'd slept through. "I feel better Walter," I summarized for him so he'd let the matter drop and we could move on to another topic of conversation.

I craned my neck to look towards the entryway. Where's Olivia?" I asked, not caring that I sounded needy since I doubted Walter would be fooled in any case. "I thought I heard her come in with you."

Walter's face suddenly switched from childish to sly. "Yes," he said, although he said the word slowly, making it sound like it had three syllables, "Agent Dunham gave me a ride home."

"I'm in the kitchen," Olivia called.

"She's making dinner." Walter added.

Now I was nervous. Olivia is good at many things: hand to hand combat, keeping things to herself, and I've seen her disassemble a semi-automatic with the urgency and deference I've only witnessed before in arms dealers. But food, not so much. I reached for my walker and heaved myself off the couch.

"Don't worry," Olivia's amused voice came, closer now, from the dining room. She waited while I slowly maneuvered around the edge of the couch and could look up at her now standing in the dining room. She held up a Styrofoam container, "More like pouring dinner."

She had a stack of bowls next to her on the table and I could smell my very favorite food smell, "Is that Indian?"

She nodded. Walter was up and in the dining room in an instant. He poked through bags, piled food into two separate bowls, grabbed a handful of naan and was ensconced back on the couch asking for his _Dr. Who_ DVD's before I even made it to the table.

"Next to the TV Walter," I said over my shoulder as I made my painful, slow way to the table under Olivia's watchful eye.

"Did I hear you say you feel better?"

I nodded. "Fewer drugs necessary this afternoon," I said as I eased myself into the chair she'd gestured to.

I leaned over and sniffed in the direction of the tub she was now pouring over a bowlful of rice. "Chicken tikka masala?"

"Yep," she said as she stuck a fork in the bowl. "Number five."

"God, that sounds good!"

She stepped toward my chair, sliding the bowl towards me and gesturing at it. "Eat," she commanded as she started to fit lids back onto containers and gather up the mess Walter made getting at the food.

I looked at the bowl. "Where's yours?"

"I've got biryani in the kitchen," she said. She swiped a large drip off the edge of the tikka masala tub with her index finger and shoved her finger in her mouth.

"Olivia, you don't have to serve me."

She looked down at me, a smile twisting the corners of her mouth. "That sounds awfully dramatic." She rolled her eyes for good measure. "Whatever, Peter. I poured your dinner, not gave you a kidney. Just eat. I'll get mine and be back in a minute." She swiped along the other side of the tub, collecting more Indian sauce along her finger.

Maybe it was the bizarre domesticity—Olivia bringing home my favorite takeout dinner and sharing it with Walter and I was about as close to normal as we got. Maybe it was the day's bone-grinding boredom, I honestly don't know what came over me. I meant it to be playful, maybe even grateful. She had been thoughtful—all day: the pills, the note, the clothes, the dinner she drove out of her way to get in ugly traffic. I wanted her to know I noticed. I grabbed her wrist attached to the drippy finger, guided it to my own mouth, and buried it in past her second knuckle.

At first, I just enjoyed the sauce. It was extra spicy, just the way I like it. But after that, when I started using my tongue on her finger, I looked at her across the length of her arm and saw the green gas-flame of her eyes and instantly forgot about everything else: the food, Walter's background nitpicking _Dr. Who's_ science, my own near-death and the ever-present pain that reminded me of it.

Olivia didn't move. She just sat there and let me tongue her finger like it was part of our routine, like avoiding meaningful conversations or having white-hot, secret sex.

Then, suddenly, somehow, it became a pissing contest. She didn't-wouldn't move and I wouldn't-couldn't stop. So we sat, posed like actors in some wrongheaded adult film, me sucking her finger, her impassively letting me, the wry half-smile she'd had from her last line of dialogue still glued onto her face.

I loosened my grip on her wrist and let off the suction of my mouth. As tempting a prospect as a game of sex-chicken with Olivia was, in my current condition I was guaranteed to lose. I wanted to make sure that when we played that game, I was in fighting form. I had no illusions I'd ever win, but I wanted to make sure I was fit enough to appreciate the sport.

I returned to my bowl, picked up my fork and dug in with what I hoped was a kind of casualness. I suspect the pharmacy's worth of drugs in my system from the last five days had something to do with my success.

By the time we finished eating and Olivia had coaxed Walter into helping her clean up, I was tired, but tonight it was in a more satisfying way. It wasn't the groggy, drugged, can't-take-another-step-without-collapsing tired, but more of a gluttonous food-coma that made me unwilling to get up off the dining room chair even though I'd be rewarded with my bed if I did. It was technically time for my next dose of painkillers, but tonight I felt less like I'd been the subject of a diabolical experiment and more like I'd overdid it on my runs for the week.

Also, I wanted to know whether Olivia was going to stay the night and I never have been able to leave well enough alone. I'm just not that trainable.

I could hear Walter and Olivia talking in deliberately low tones in the kitchen, but I couldn't make out what they were saying.

Walter came out a few moment later and made a production out of going to bed, assuring Olivia and I in his Super-Animated voice that he was going to take a newly-designed sedative. When Olivia followed him into the dining room looking pained, he touched her forearm and delivered this evening's coup de grace: "I wouldn't wake up if elephants were copulating dear."

"And there it is." I said, nodding at Olivia and Walter both. I really had been waiting for the day's Most Mortifying Comment. "Thank you for that Walter." I considered that this was one, of perhaps ten-thousand reasons why grown men don't live with their fathers. The fact that Walter's agonizing commentary was usually on par with the workings of my own mind didn't make me feel any better.

As usual, my sarcasm didn't deflate Walter's good mood one iota. He even leaned over and kissed Olivia's cheek, seeming not to notice when she flinched and stiffened.

We both watched Walter walk up the stairs. When I turned back around I saw that Olivia had a bottle of whiskey cradled in her hand along with one of our coffee mugs. When I raised my eyebrows at her, she just shrugged and said, "Couldn't find the rocks glasses."

I vaguely remembered Walter using them to catch his urine to test the metabolic rate of a new drug he was experimenting with, but I decided not to share that little tidbit, reasoning that we'd enough of Walter's shenanigans for the night.

Olivia poured herself a healthy amount of whiskey into the mug and when I looked at her face and saw the blank porcelain mask she reserves for end-of-the-world calamities I groaned inwardly. I should have known. Three fucking years, you'd think by now I'd have learned that any moments of contentment we manage to snatch from the resentful Moirae would be repaid with adversity tenfold.

"Now what?" I asked and I knew that instead of sounding angry, as I'd hoped, I just sounded pathetic.

"While you were gone Cassandra visited me." Olivia drained nearly half the mug in one toss and then looked at me from under her eyelashes. "And Walter figured out what they wanted from you."

As conversation starters go, it was a son of a bitch.


	8. Chapter 8

**Sum over Histories**

by MVariorum

**Summary**: Olivia comes back. Olivia and Peter save the world. Again.  
><strong>Categories<strong>: Romance; Adventure; Smut  
><strong>Pairings<strong>: Peter/Olivia  
><strong>Rating<strong>: M. So kiddies, the faint of heart, and those with refined taste should scoot along elsewhere. You have been warned.  
><strong>Story Notes<strong>: Please accept my preemptive apologies for the pseudo-pseudoscience. Not a scientist. Sadly, I'm not even a pseudoscientist. Never will be.  
><strong>Disclaimer<strong>: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.  
><strong>Chapters<strong>: ?  
><strong>Completed<strong>: No (but getting there!)  
><strong>Spoilers<strong>: Slight AU after early season 3 (more or less around _Do Shapeshifters Dream of Electric Sheep?). _Includes some elements of the early part of Season 3, but no spoilers beyond that.

As always, many thanks to those who reviewed and alerted. All standard claims and pleas about the importance of reviews to an author apply.

This chapter is primarily a big 'ol smutfest, so take extra note of the M rating for all the normal, naughty reasons. It wasn't intentional, just a happy coincidence!

And for the most important thank you of all. Warm, fuzzy love to my beta starg8fans for the stimulating conversation, the bottomless encouragement, and the pictures of a sweater-clad Peter.

**Chapter 8 / ?**

Olivia sat at the dining room table, sipping whiskey, staring into the dark living room, resting her hands on the table so they wouldn't shake, and explaining to me how I was the lucky winner of the Choose Which World Survives Contest. She told me the whole sordid story: how Walter didn't just unbalance the worlds when he took me, but spun them off their fated courses as well. How, in order to put things right again, I had to choose one of the worlds and become its permanent resident so it could survive. How that choice would irrevocably destroy the unchosen world and all its inhabitants. How, Walter was pretty sure that the process was likely to kill me. And how, even if I was willing to do all of that, there were no guarantees that anything would change for the better because the information we'd been given was about as trustworthy as a third-world dictator with a personal vendetta.

"Whatsit energy field?" I asked. "Really?"

She leaned forward on the table, tucking her hands into her armpits and resting her elbows on the table. "I don't know. Walter has a better name for it." She paused. "Doesn't matter what I call it though. You still have to choose."

"I wasn't even talking about that yet," I confessed. "I'm still stuck on dear old dad trying to get the machine to work by sucking the life-force out of me to try and force a decision in their favor." It was true enough. I couldn't even face the prospect of me having to choose one of two worlds filled with innocent people blithely going about their lives. My brain simply stuttered and ground to a halt when it encountered that possibility, like the old maps of the world that printed "Here There Be Dragons" on the unexplored areas that no one had returned from alive.

"We aren't sure it was his people who took you," she reminded me. "Walter says the shapeshifter technology is somewhat different than the others we've looked at . . ." but she didn't finish the thought or look at me when she said it, so she wasn't very convincing.

She stood up too when I drug myself up out of the chair and gimped over to the bottom of the stairs. At the foot, I spun and sat down, having found it was much easier to get up and down the stairs on my ass. It's a testament to how absolutely shattered I was that it didn't even cross my mind that I didn't want Olivia to see me having to go up and down the stairs like a toddler who hasn't yet learned to walk.

I heard Olivia carrying the bottle and glass back into the kitchen as I drug myself up the stairs, one at a time. I saw her at the bottom of the stairs right about the time I made it to the middle landing. With one hand holding my walker she followed me up at a pace slow enough not to crowd me as I heaved myself up the last half of the stairs. When I reached the top, she handed me my walker over the last four steps and waited while I levered myself up the last stair. After I hobbled into the room I heard her shut the door behind her. I shoved the walker into a corner and wobbled the last few steps on my own.

I sat down on the edge of my bed, scrubbing my hands across my face and up through my hair. Try as I might, I just couldn't seem to wrap my brain around the magnitude of what Olivia had just told me. No wonder Walter fled upstairs at the first possible opportunity. I heard a rustle of fabric as Olivia shed her work clothes. She padded up behind the bed and kneeled on it, walking her way across the bed so she was behind me, the mattress dipping with the weight of her on either side of my hips. She rested her hands on my shoulders and put her chin on her right hand so her face was close to mine. Her hair fell over her shoulders and swung in front of both our faces. I reached up to touch it, letting it fold into a pile in the palm of my upturned hand.

I was so overwhelmed; there were so many things wrong with the situation I didn't even know how to begin to separate them. I wanted to scream with rage. I wanted to weep at the injustice of it all. The part of me that is really an asshole wanted to laugh aloud that the fate of both worlds came down to me, who had scarcely uttered a sincere word in my adult life. The nicest thing you could say about me was that I was entirely full of shit. The very best of my major life decisions had been merely not destructive. _As flies to wanton boys we are to the_ _gods_ didn't seem to quite cover it, as I'd long ago left Lear and his inheritance problems behind in the dust.

Olivia didn't say anything. What the hell could she say? And let's face it, Olivia's not so good with words under the best of conditions. Lucky for us she could read my mind, and I suspected right now it had nothing to do with her abilities. She shifted and reached her left arm around me, gathering me to her so I could lean into her and press my back flush against her body. The pressure was light but firm, any harder and it would have hurt, any less and it wouldn't have felt so comforting.

Her body heated the length of my back as her mouth moved along the side of my face and neck almost primly, stroking and nuzzling with only her lips, not a hint of tongue or teeth. I trembled in her arms and for a moment, it really could have gone either way. I was on the verge of . . . something. I felt feckless and incompetent and utterly, utterly worthless. The feeling was physically painful. It felt like one of those luminous moments, foreordained and irrevocable. As if whatever I did next would determine who I was at the core and as a result, the fate of both universes.

Happily for everyone involved, Olivia is always eager to tell me what to do. She let go of me, leaned back on her knees and, with a hand on my right shoulder, she pushed and gently guided me down onto my back. I let her move me around like a doll, pressing a pillow under my shoulders, lifting my legs up onto the mattress, opening my right arm so she could stretch out alongside me.

She propped herself up on an elbow and studied her open hand as it stroked my body: my thighs and hips, my belly and chest, arms and shoulders. When her fingers reached my neck, she used her hand on my chin to turn my face in her direction. She scooted up so her body weight wouldn't be resting on me, and I felt the pressure of her elbow on the mattress next to my ear as she kissed me.

It was almost chaste at first, just our mouths kiting gossamer against each other. After a while she tilted her head slightly and increased the pressure, parting her lips. On and on we kissed as she offered me her mouth to sample again and again until my head was spinning and I wasn't sure whose lungs, hers or mine, I was breathing with anymore.

We'd never spent a lot of time kissing. Our sex life had been electric and, if not exactly hasty, there hadn't been much room in its structure to devote a disproportionate amount of time to any single activity. With a light hand on my chest she moved closer, pressing herself carefully against me, sliding a leg between mine, and tucking an arm around my shoulder, fitting her hand between my head and the pillow and stroking my neck.

She kept touching me like I might easily be broken if handled too harshly. I certainly felt broken: I worried that the wretched, jagged-glass pieces of me would cut her if she wasn't careful.

When she opened her mouth and slid the wet sand of her tongue against mine it felt like the first time I'd ever tasted her and I trembled against her like a schoolboy. I turned to her so we could be face to face, careful of my right shoulder, not wanting to break contact with the heat of her mouth which had suddenly become the end all, be all of my existence. Her hand trailed down to rest on my forearm so it moved with me when I reached up to cup her face, resting my fingertips on her neck where I felt the muscles there ripple in reply.

We lay there for what felt like hours, necking like middle-schoolers hiding in dark corners from the chaperones, both of us uncertain how to proceed, unwilling to press the contact into something more in case we misstepped and snapped the silken-thread that bound us across the expanse of our individual selves.

Philosophers tell us that we are all alone, that no human being can ever really know another. Communication doesn't help: we struggle, but cannot infiltrate the unbreachable distance between us, the barren No Man's Land of autonomy, impenetrable as tenement blocks. Until I met Olivia, I believed that, and frankly, I never bothered to try. But somehow Olivia crashed through the citadel that isolates us with her fierce and angry self, and then calmly went to live there between us.

The thought made me bold, willing to risk the loss for the chance at something exceptional. With my mouth still sealed to hers and my hands cradling her face, I slowly rolled myself over, pulling her with me. I slid my hands to her hips, hitching her across my middle so she was beginning to straddle me. She broke our kiss, murmuring a protest against my mouth when she realized she was half on top of me.

"It's a good hurt," I promised her.

Her hair swung forward, covering my face, and she swept it aside so I could see her tentative smile as she sat up and settled herself on top of me, watching my face to confirm she wasn't hurting me.

I smoothed her arms, one on either side of me. "You'll just have to do most of the work," I told her as she tucked the length of her hair over one shoulder and bent over me, putting a hand on either side of my face to keep most of her body weight off of me.

"How's that any different than usual?" She whispered in my ear the second before she started nibbling on it.

I snuffled gently at the insult, "Them's fighting words, missy," I told her, even as I felt a warmth bloom in my chest that she'd even suggest that we had a "usual," a routine that only belonged to us.

With her legs on either side of me and her body stretched overtop of mine I felt about as healed as I think I could ever be. I palmed her back from her shoulders to her hips, frustrated when I couldn't feel her skin. "You have a lot of clothes on," I complained.

Keeping her weight on her knees, she sat up, pulled her tank over her head and chucked it aside. Bending forward she reached behind her and unclasped her bra, stretching her arms out so it could roll off onto the floor by the bed.

"Better?"

I glanced at her underwear. "Almost. You forgot something."

She swung her leg up from around the far side of my hips and stood by the bed, shimming out of her underwear until they dropped on the floor. When she got back on the bed, she held out her hand for me to grab and she hauled me up until I was seated and helped me out of my shirt carefully, not missing an opportunity to run her fingertips down my sides along my ribcage where, when they weren't throbbing, I was most ticklish. I sucked in a breath and tried to trap her hands but missed.

She pushed me back onto the bed, helping me down again and reached for the button on my jeans which she unfastened and slid down my legs along with my boxers in short order.

She looked at me so seriously she might have been thinking about ways to reduce the national debt. Then she nodded and swung her leg over me again, resuming her modified plank position on top of me. "I see what you mean," she said as her mouth returned to my neck, "this is much better."

I managed to grunt a few phonemes in agreement. The must have been semi-satisfactory since Olivia stopped talking and turned her mouth to more pleasant tasks.

I stroked the skin of her back with my fingertips, trying to mimic the light touch of her hands on my shoulders. When her mouth met mine again her fingers-only touch broadened and she carefully rested her body on my chest, so she could run her open hands up and down my sides and my hips before they swept up and splayed along the sides of my face.

Frustration swept through me in a rush. I wanted some measure of control that my healing body simply wouldn't oblige with. I thrashed a little under her, chafing with frustration, craving something more, yet unable to define it, let alone put it into words. She froze and pushed herself up off of me instantly so she was crouched on her hands and knees over me. Involuntarily I arched up to follow her body, the absence of which was a sudden and profound loss. She studied my face, assuming it was pain that caused my thrashing. I wanted. . . I wanted . . . I didn't know what I wanted.

She rested back on her haunches still watching me, trying to puzzle through my strange behavior. It wasn't like me. In the past, getting Olivia naked and even halfway horizontal was about the extent of my life's ambitions. She concentrated, her brows pinching together and I could tell she was reading me, deliberately, obviously. Seconds later her face relaxed and her mouth twisted in her signature half-smile before she reached between us, shifted and enveloped my aching cock in her body.

I almost arched off of the bed and I gripped her forearms with my hands in an effort to keep me attached to something solid. When I felt like I could commit to language a few seconds later I looked up at her and panted, "Olivia?" I hadn't even touched her. And I may be a jackass, but I'm not an asshole. Taking the time to ensure she was ready was definitely part of the unwritten rules, but if the soaking heat of her was any indication, she was more than ready.

"Shhh," she said, skimming her thumb across my lips as she started to move. "You talk too much."

She moved slowly, working her body down my cock until her hips were flush against mine and I thought I'd scream with the bliss of it. She bent over me, her arms pressing the bed down on either side of my shoulders, her head tucked next to mine, the rope of her hair draped across my neck.

She set a rhythm, careful and slow, fitting her hips tight against mine, enveloping me in her body in her precise and specific way. Still, it wasn't enough. I wanted more.

I put my palm on her sternum and shoved her back so I could see her. "More," I demanded, since anything other than single words would have overtaxed my intellectual abilities.

She just stared at me, concern shadowing her face. Olivia really does better with actions than with words anyway, I reasoned, as I gripped her hips and slammed her down on me.

Her eyes narrowed, the lids suddenly seeming too heavy for her to hold them open, and she grabbed my wrists for leverage, arched back, drew her hips away from mind and hurled them back down.

I must have made some complimentary noises because she caught on and began to move so harsh and fast I arched against her and squeezed her hands in mine so tight I thought the thin bones in them might crack.

She leaned back away from me and I freed one of my hands to angle her hips backwards with a hand on her belly so my cock could stroke her G-spot.

God she was beautiful. Looking up at her was pure visual overload. The crinkled petals of her nipples that rose and fell as she moved on top of me, my dark hand against the bleached-bone whiteness of her skin, the tuft of light hair my cock disappeared into, the possessive splay of my fingers in the space between the slopes of her breasts, the waterfall of her hair that tickled the tops of my thighs when she arched back in the brief second she was flush against me. It was too much. She was everything at once, friend, guardian, lover, and my chest swelled with the import of it all.

She started drawing the little half-breaths and strangled gasps that I knew meant she was close. Surprise wrenched me back from the brink of my own release when she suddenly wrapped one of her hands around each of my wrists and jammed them palms up into the mattress by my shoulders. A knowing superiority darkened her face and put a sly twist on her lips when she shifted her body weight forward so most of it funneled down through her arms pinning mine to the bed. Her face knotted with concentration and I only had a second to process that look before—

_Oh, shit_.

Then she was _in_ me. Beginning at the base of my spine, she was red wine spilled in all directions, saturating the starched linen of my mind, consuming the warp and weft of what was left of my consciousness. The sheer intensity of it made my autonomic nervous system stagger like an old record, snagging and zipping all the way across to hiss in repetitive static at the end.

Struggling to even breathe around her inside me I gasped and gaped at her. She was everywhere at once, a growing warmth sliding in alongside me, hot oil worming her way into spaces I hadn't known were empty.

It was beyond my senses, beyond language, but I'm not very bright so I tried anyway, even as I struggled to perform basic bodily functions. I garbled and gasped, hating the way my voice was ragged and my half-words a question, wishing more than anything else that she could feel what she was doing to me.

Concentrating, she pressed her body against me. Without letting up on my hands, she leaned down and rested her forehead against mine. Her hair swung down over her shoulders to brush my neck as little tremors gathered and raced though her body and spilled into mine.

Still she kept moving, and I could feel her rippling along inside me, overflowing into me, a dam bursting, releasing the reservoir of Olivia. I don't know if it was intentional or not, it was just a momentary flicker, a breathless instant, when she cracked a door somewhere inside, suffering a light to fall on how she needed me. How vital it was that I understood her; how my faith taught her to find and know herself.

I barely held it together for more than a second after that and when the orgasm came and I splintered, the pieces were so drenched with her I was positive I'd never be able to put myself back together again.

She must have come too because she collapsed on top of me, her heart pounding against my chest. Or maybe it was mine—impossible to tell at that point.

She lay on top of me for a while our hearts slowed together eventually synching so they thumped together in the same time.

"You are so going to pay for that tomorrow," she remarked as she slid off me and pressed her body alongside mine on the bed.

I couldn't speak—wasn't sure I'd ever be able to speak again after what I'd just experienced and so we lay there silent together for what felt like hours, me too overwhelmed to say anything at all.

There in the glowing dark, sealed around each other tight as dividing cells I wanted to tell her that I loved her, that I'd never leave her, that I'd protect her and all the people in both worlds as best I could. But the heavy weight of my impending "Use By" date kept me silent. I had never lied to Olivia before and I didn't want to start now—at least not intentionally, and intentions have to count for something if we ever hope to bridge the gap that separates us from one another. So I tightened my arms around her and pulled her a little closer feeling her chin dig a little deeper into my shoulder.

I hoped she knew, I hoped that when she was winding around inside me that she was able to see herself through my eyes, just for a moment. So she could know what I know about her. But I couldn't tell her this. Even if I let myself believe Olivia would want to hear it, even if I could find the words, I wouldn't be able to bend them the ways I'd need to for them to make sense. The words had always been too small or too large, never the right size to fill the spaces of what there was between us. That had always been easier for Olivia to accept than it was for me. She accepted our silences; accepted the things we didn't say as faithfully as those we did and then, in her formidable, resolute way, got on with it. The fact that she was here with me now, I knew, meant she wasn't going to leave me. And our relationship was so determined by finding a way to save both worlds, her choice to stay and fight the good fight was absolutely indistinguishable from her resolving to stay with me. She might never say it, but she wouldn't leave, at least not until the bloodshed was over or one of us was dead, whichever came first.

When I wasn't feeling shattered and needy and broken it was easier for me to listen when I told myself that if Olivia confessed her undying love to me that would make her a person who wasn't her. A shiver sparked up my spine involuntarily as I remembered things I'd rather forget. I've been there; I have that T-shirt and I'll pass, thanks.

Of course, it wouldn't hurt for Olivia to go all "You-Had-Me-At-Hello" on me, just once.

She sighed and slinked her legs among mine. When she spoke into my neck we had been silent for so long it felt like the first words any human being ever uttered to another. "I know you can do this Peter. Nobody else but you would even try."

Well, what do you know? Sometimes Olivia does say the right thing.

* * *

><p>Wakefulness came slowly the next morning. I slept like I'd been drugged, harbored in alongside Peter's curled body the whole night, a guarded slip on an unruly sea. If my aching joints were any indication we hadn't moved at all.<p>

When I cracked open one of my eyes I looked up and saw Peter staring down at me, his eyes brightened with such unguarded affection I looked away, fearing I'd go blind if I stared into them too long.

"Now, you know better than anyone else how creepy that is," I reminded him.

He didn't look away, or even bother to look embarrassed. "How did you do that?" he asked.

I could pretend I didn't know what he was talking about and he might let it go, or he might not, but in any case I'd look like an idiot, so I decided to forgo playing dumb.

"I'm not sure. It's not like I plan these things."

He was concentrating intently on me, and on this conversation. "I mean, did you think about it specifically—did you _try_? Or did it just happen?"

He wasn't going to like my answer. "A little of both, maybe."

I could tell by the determined set of his face that evasiveness wasn't going to work—he wanted an answer. Peter doesn't get committed to very many things: it's probably a survival tactic from living with Walter, and maybe even his mother, though he never talks about her. He whines and bitches and spreads sarcasm with an even and liberal hand, but when it's time to pull up the bootstraps and get things done, he shuts up and goes with the program, no matter how wrongheaded he thinks it is. It was one of his better qualities, actually. I don't just keep him around for the tricks he could pull with that capable mouth of his, no matter how gifted he was in that department.

But when he does get committed to something, he's worse than a terrier with a bone. A yappy, irksome terrier too dedicated to his goal to realize he should quit when he's ahead.

I wasn't completely certain what had happened. I know that when we have sex Peter progresses from background noise to deafening roar so quickly I can't suppress him, even when I want to. Even when he's trying and being quiet, I have to exert a certain amount of energy propping up the walls I've built to keep him out. When I was close to coming, it sometimes becomes too much work to keep him out, so I just let myself slide into him, for once allowing myself the path of least resistance.

But another part of me—a part of me I'd never share—had deliberately pushed myself into him, because I _wanted_ him to feel me. Wanted him to feel what I felt and know what it was like to be utterly saturated with me like I was saturated with him. If I were honest with myself, which I rarely was, the weight of our responsibilities at that moment had been so considerable I'd wanted to claim him, wanted him to know that he was mine, even if I could never let myself need him like that ever again.

And he'd been so desperate and broken last night. Understandably so. I knew a little something about feeling like the world was spinning too fast for you to grab hold of. Feeling like the task you were charged with was far beyond your capabilities and skill set, that you were more sinned against than sinning and redemption still out of reach. I at least wanted him to know I wouldn't be leaving.

"Olivia?" he prodded.

I really was bad at this. Up until now I really had preferred to be alone in my life. Keeping people out was easier, and less painful in the long run, not to mention it prevented me from having to answer questions like this. With Peter, it had become a nasty habit of mine to use sex to keep him away. I wasn't certain I could change that, but only Peter could make me want to try.

"I did try," I said slowly, struggling for the right words. "A little."

"Why?"

Well, shit. He was going to make me say it. "I just . . ." I paused, not wanting to say it wrong, wanting to say it straight enough he'd at least know I was trying. "I wanted you to know what it's like."

Evidently this was a satisfactory answer, because he sucked in a deep breath and rolled me over so I was half under him, ignoring how his body twitched in protest and proceeded to kiss me until I was dizzy from both want and lack of oxygen.

He pulled his mouth away from mine with a groan and rested his forehead against mine, panting. "Christ, I always want you. It _never_ ends." He sounded genuinely puzzled, like he was pondering a theoretical concept too dense to get his brain around. I understood, I realized as I arched into the weight of his body against mine. I was confounded by the same theory.

"But I have to shower. It's been days," he added.

"Well, you haven't really been up to it." I demurred.

"Now, I'm up for anything," he told me, as he guided my hand to his erection.

I just shook my head and rolled my eyes at his frat-boy humor, but I gave him a consensual squeeze, enjoying his gasp against my cheek when I touched him.

He groaned again and rolled away from me, pulling himself up so he was seated at the edge of the bed. I watched him test his limbs for discomfort. He turned and looked at me. "Better," he said approvingly. I don't think I'll need any more Percocet—some ibuprofen should do it. Then he grimaced at the walker I'd shoved into the corner last night. "And I won't be needing that thing anymore."

It was delicious to just lay there and watch him sitting at the edge of the bed. The furtive nature of our relationship until very recently meant that I never got to see him undressed in the daylight, so even with the purple bruises that made him look like he'd been the subject of a hasty, unplanned tie-dye venture he still looked fantastic to me. Individually, Peter's features are largely forgettable. If I'd seen him in a bar, if I'd been the kind of woman who went looking for men in bars, I'd have passed on by. Unless, of course, he smiled at me, in which case I'd have probably gone down on him under the table just for a chance at seeing that smile to see his head tilt to the side and his eyes crinkle in that irresistible way.

John had been picture-perfect, textbook gorgeous. Square head, V-shaped physique, paint-by-numbers muscles. On any given day he could have booked a photo shoot for a magazine, _Men's Health_ or _Details_ or some such. John's standard-issue good looks were agreeable, but privately I always felt sleeping with John was a bit like sleeping with a washboard: rugged and hard in all the right places, good for getting things done of course, but not something you'd want to rub up against for any length of time. The affair's clandestine forbiddenness, in retrospect I'll admit, was at least half of the appeal, so at the time I wasn't inclined to dwell on John's taut and brittle form. Overdeveloped muscles have their place, but there's something to be said for a man who possesses just a tiny bit of softness, whose body has just a little winsome give to it when you climb on top of it.

Now, with the thousand light years' experience the last three years had given me, it was hard for me to think of my affair with John as anything other than convenient, even though it had felt so right at the time. When I think back and remember the pink, earnest face I used to see when I smoothed my hair afterwards in the by-the-hour motel mirror, I could hardly recall how his perceived betrayal bit so painfully, could scarcely imagine wanting the things I thought I wanted from John now.

Somehow, through all the drama, I'd changed into someone I didn't recognize—someone who, if I met myself for the first time, I probably wouldn't have wanted to know.

I'd never been cut out for picket fence anyway, although for a number of years I'd tried to pretend. John wanted to marry me, and if my life hadn't exploded and gone down as fast and fiery as Flight 627, I probably would have tried, but I suspect in the end it would have failed. Rachel got all the domestic genes in the family. The day the gods gifted nurturing, Rachel got in line twice; I must have been at the shooting range. Necessity had always made me more inclined to fire a weapon than a stove burner, since the one useful thing my stepfather impressed on me as a child was the importance of skill in armament. The domestic arts were simply lost on me. I'd probably have starved if I'd been born in an era before microwave ovens and carry-out.

Maybe I was being ungenerous and John knew and didn't mind that if we had married I would have brought little to the union apart from a compulsion to protect the weak and an unhealthy esteem for weapons. There was no way now to know for certain.

Peter hobbled over to retrieve his jeans on his way to the shower, and I observed the smooth wing of his flank appreciatively. At least I had Peter to ease the sting of the loss of what might have passed for a normal life. He didn't seem to mind that I'd turned into someone resentful and hostile. Peter spent time with my clearly more engaging twin, and all things being equal, he had a better chance at happiness with her. Still, he'd shown mostly indifference to the far more pleasant version of me, and there was something to be said for that. If nothing else, it was reassuring to know he preferred me, however disagreeable I'd become. If Peter saw something in me still worth salvaging, I could let myself believe it too.

It was unnerving, but not surprising, to discover that my view of my own worth was entwined with Peter's opinion of me. In the weeks since I had been back, my own personal difficulties had made it hard for me to keep sight of what it was we were fighting for. Managing those difficulties had become too formidable a task to find anything profitable in the howling mass of my own pain and hardship. For a long time, it had only been through Peter that I had been able to keep a measure of sympathy with the rest of the human race; it wasn't shocking to learn that any compassion I was capable of wrestling for myself should come through him too.

There were far worse places I could have ended up with than with Peter. He was attentive and intelligent, not to mention unbelievable in bed—his skill at pleasure was exceeded only by his dedication to the future we were charged with preserving. The compassion that was the sine qua non of his existence, I realized with a pang, would drive him to find a way to save both worlds, even if it meant he'd have to sacrifice himself to do it. I knew myself well enough to know I'd need to depend on it if I was to survive what I knew was coming and hope to retain any scrap of my humanity.

Walter depended on it too, although I don't know if Walter would have expressed it that way. Walter thought big, lived big, was incapable of thinking in narrow parameters. Peter kept him fed, kept him sane, it's true, but he also pressed empathy on Walter like pain is pressed on martyrs, who otherwise would have never know the lack. Peter ignored the ramifications of his actions every bit as much as Walter and I did, but his recklessness was always in service of a specific human being who was suffering right in front of him.

I swung my legs over the side of the bed and headed for the door, grabbing Peter's discarded T-shirt along the way and pulling it down to cover enough of my woman parts that I wouldn't be embarrassed if I ran into Walter. I poked my head out of the bedroom door and heard Walter talking back at the morning weather report. I glanced back over at the clock on Peter's bedside table. It was a little after 7:00, which meant I'd have to hustle to make it to work by 8:00, not that I was in any way required to keep regular hours. Nobody was keeping track of me, and if they were, they'd just assume I was out digging the hard drive out of some shapeshifter's spine or necking with a stripper in someone else's dream. If Broyles was going to write me up for not coloring inside the lines, he'd have done it long ago, so really, I had all the time in the world.

I might even be able to include sleeping with Peter in my ever-expanding job description. I don't remember a lot about my first visit to the other dimension, but I remember William Bell saying I'd need Peter by my side for the war that's coming. With a little Orwellian double-speak I just might be able to include that the next time I have to stand and introduce myself at one of the Departmental Team Building Seminars. _Hello, my name is Olivia Dunham, I work in the highly-classified Fringe Division, which you've never heard of because it doesn't exist. In my spare time I mainline psychotropics to cross into the next dimension in an attempt to unravel the conspiracy of humanoid-shapeshifting soldiers engineered to destroy our world. I have bone-melting sex with Peter Bishop, the abducted son of the Secretary of Defense from the alternate universe who is trying to destroy this world because of his anger at the loss of his son. _I imagined the open-mouthed, dumbstruck faces of my fellow agents who lived in a world where the all the bad guys were human from this reality, only with really bad formative years.

Heading down the hallway toward the bathroom I passed Walter's room and saw his bed, already neatly made through is bedroom doorway.

I slipped into the bathroom quietly and locked the door behind me. Thankfully, the noise of the shower drowned out my entrance and I sat down to pee.

"Olivia?" Peter's voice sounded deeper against the acoustics of the water and the bathroom tile.

"Does Walter usually come in when you are showering?"

"Do you really want to know the answer to that? Consider it more hope than question."

I stood up and pulled the shirt over my head, letting it drop to the floor. I pushed the shower curtain aside and saw Peter standing there with his fingers deep in his soapy head.

He looked troubled, like perhaps there was a fire and I had a unique way of warning him. When I stepped into the shower with him though he smiled and pulled me in for a kiss, wrapping his arms around my waist. Still kissing him, I reached up into his soapy hair and walked him backwards a half step until he was under the spray. I pulled back a little from his mouth so I could see enough to rinse his hair for him since his hands were otherwise occupied gripping my ass. He leaned back and closed his eyes while I finished getting him clean of the soap.

Once he was rinsed, I tipped my head up to suck the skin of his jaw. My mouth stuttered down the water-covered curve of his neck and the top of his chest. Chest to chest, I shuffle-turned him around so now I was standing under the spray and then walked him backwards to the edge of their claw-foot tub, which had somehow managed to survive the house's many years of reconstruction and refurbishment.

Thankful for the tub's high sides, I backed Peter so he sat down, his ass on the edge and his back against the tiled wall behind the all-around shower curtain which keep the water from spraying out.

Once he was seated on the edge, I kneeled down and opened his knees so I could wiggle in between them and put my mouth against the baby-soft skin of his belly smiling a little to myself when it twitched underneath my mouth and his cock grew harder against my breastbone.

He rested his hands on my shoulders, smoothing my now damp hair along and down my back before he squeezed them with shaking hands when I dropped my mouth onto his cock.

I went all the way down, taking him in as far as I could. When he stroked the back of my throat which involuntarily contracted around him, he groaned and squeezed the back of my neck.

"Holy, . . . God, . . . Olivia!" His hands rubbed down my arms which were resting on his thighs until they got to the ends where they twined with my hands alternately squeezing and stroking in time with my mouth.

He froze for a moment, untwined his hands and brushed my cheek with his fingers to get my attention. When I looked up at him still holding him in my mouth he groaned again. "Jesus, . . . Tell me you locked the door when you came in, please?" The last word came out a pitiful whine when I continued stroking, but kept eye contact with him while I listened.

I nodded, causing him to hiss in reply and twist both his hands in the hair on the back of my head. I bent my head back down on his cock and put my free hand on top of his, encouraging him to help me achieve the rhythm he wanted.

One of his hands slipped from the back of my head and clenched and unclenched along my bent back. I fondled his balls with the hand I'd removed from his on top of my head, applying pressure with my thumb underneath them so he twitched and jerked under my hands. He was trembling all over now, patting and stroking me erratically, rambling incoherently about my beauty, my character, my intelligence, my expertise.

Even under normal conditions I'm about as likely to keep Peter quiet as I am to part the Red Sea. When he's getting head, the voice of God himself couldn't shut him up.

His hands were now scrabbling against my head, his hips lifting off the bathtub rim and I knew he was close. When he started coming I swallowed a few more centimeters of him and he came along the back of my throat which contracted as I swallowed, causing him to twitch and jerk even more.

He slumped along the wall behind him for a few seconds and I unbent myself from between his legs so I was kneeling in front of him, feeling the water spray along my back as I stroked his thighs with both my hands mindful of his cock now laying half-mast along the side of his leg.

I wasn't really looking forward to trying to stand up. I had a feeling my knees were going to ache for at least the remainder of the day, if not longer. He sat up and dropped his mouth to mine, achingly gentle.

"That never gets old," he reminded me.

"Mmmm," I replied, "so you've said." I shifted my weight back onto my feet, bending my knees and straightening up, noting they weren't quite as bad as I'd anticipated. "Why don't you just lay there and relax while I shower."

"Uh-huh," he agreed, looking like he might never move again. I reached for the shampoo and he sat up a little straighter and observed me through lowered lids as I started to lather my hair.

After I rinsed my hair I turned to face the spray while I soaped my front. Never one to miss an opportunity, Peter reached out and patted my ass and said, "We'll need to make it back to the bedroom if I'm going to reciprocate okay?" I nodded while rinsing myself and he grimaced then added, "I don't think I'm going to be doing much on my knees outside of bed until I'm fully healed. I'm better today, but not nearly good enough to crouch on this ceramic-covered cast iron." He rapped his knuckles on the tub for emphasis.

That was fine. I had come to share the shower with him, not looking for turnabout. If we were keeping score, which we weren't, Peter was still far ahead of me in the giving oral-sex department, so at the very least I owed him a few.

I turned the water off and dried myself and him, since Peter didn't seem inclined to do much of anything except leer at me. We snuck back to his room together and Peter backed me up against the door as soon as I closed it, loosening the towel I had wrapped around me so he could reach my breasts with his hands and mouth. Only a few moments later though, he suddenly stopped and I could hear another sound swirling around with the breathy moans I hardly recognized as my own. Walter was calling to Peter from the bottom of the stairs to ask about who was taking him to the lab today. Peter rested his forehead on my sternum with his hands still on my breasts and heaved a enormous sigh about a half-second after I did.

"If I'm going to stay here, you and Walter are going to have to have a little talk," I said against the top of his head.

He raised his head so his face wasn't even an inch from mine and just blinked at me like I'd told him I was changing my name and joining the circus and he didn't know what to say. I pulled him to me so I could press my lips to his forehead and then reluctantly pushed him away.

We dressed, and even though Peter was much slower than me, I waited for him. When he was finished I grabbed the door handle and started to open it until Peter's palm on the door right above the knob stopped me. He put a hand on my neck and pulled me against him for a wet, open-mouthed kiss and I let myself wrap my arms around his neck.

"Later?" he asked when he pulled back from me.

"Later," I agreed.

Walter's face didn't register even the slightest surprise when Peter and I came down together, equally clean and damp from the shower. He just patiently waited for me to grab some coffee, threaten Peter with personal harm if he didn't stay home and rest another day, and get my coat on before he followed me out the door after patting Peter's cheek almost maternally.


	9. Chapter 9

**Sum over Histories**

by MVariorum

**Summary**: Olivia comes back. Olivia and Peter save the world. Again.  
><strong>Pairings<strong>: Peter/Olivia  
><strong>Rating<strong>: M. So kiddies, the faint of heart, and those with refined taste should scoot along elsewhere. You have been warned.  
><strong>Story Notes<strong>: Please accept my preemptive apologies for the pseudo-pseudoscience. Not a scientist. Sadly, I'm not even a pseudoscientist. Never will be.  
><strong>Disclaimer<strong>: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.  
><strong>Spoilers<strong>: AU after early season 3 (more or less around _Do Shapeshifters Dream of Electric Sheep?). _Includes some elements of the early part of Season 3, but no spoilers beyond that.

* * *

><p>As usual, heartfelt thanks goes to my beta, starg8fans, who talked to me about this chapter long before it was written.<p>

**Chapter 9 / ?**

Nothing beats a blow job before breakfast as a way to cultivate a good mood and start the day out right. After Olivia's visit in the shower, even being stuck at home for another day didn't bother me.

My good mood lasted not only all weekend, but on through Christmas as well. The impending apocalypse must have taken an early-winter hiatus.

Olivia came home with Walter the last Friday I stayed home to heal and she never left again. It wasn't something we talked about, she just stopped going back to her apartment at the end of the day, and instead came home with Walter and me. She carried a duffel bag around for the two weeks before Christmas until I made an antique wardrobe appear in my room and dumped the contents of her bag into one of its cavernous drawers and hung up the suits and button-ups that were straining the capacity of the two tiny hooks in the bathroom. Then, to avoid confusion, I left the wardrobe doors hanging open and hid her bag in the back of my tiny closet.

Even my doctor noticed how swiftly I healed. The bruises faded into a jaundice yellow and my strength returned right around Christmas. What no one else knew was that I had incentive. With Olivia joining me in my bed every night, openly, unashamedly, there were very specific motivating factors the AMA couldn't account for. Like needing to be able to crouch on my knees and hoist around Olivia's body weight, slight though it was.

Christmas rolled up on us fast. We had our own Christmas, just me and Walter, Olivia and Astrid.

Olivia didn't go to Chicago to be with Rachel because they were celebrating out of town with her husband's family and Shannon was overseas. Even Broyles stopped by for some eggnog later in the evening.

We agreed on a no-presents holiday so I didn't give Olivia her gift until the day before New Year's. It was a Springfield 1911 with a gold bead sight and a blued finished. I wrapped it with a note from the premier gunsmith on the Eastern Seaboard who I'd bought it from, inviting her to come to the shop and get it customized however she liked.

When Olivia opened it and picked it up I knew the four thousand phone calls I'd made to the shop and the secret trip to the ass-end of Pennsylvania had been worth it. When Olivia held it, it looked like it had been made for her slender hand. It was magnificent. It was simple and restrained, severe even, but so stunningly beautiful you couldn't help but hold it in your hands. It was the kind of weapon that needed constant care and maintenance to perform at its highest capacity, but you never minded the effort because you could never bring yourself to ever, ever waste something so exquisite.

Of course, I knew Olivia would understand the language of weapons and I'd chosen it on purpose for those very reasons. Now though, when she just stared at me open-mouthed for so long, I grew uncomfortable and unsure of what to say. I said the first words that came to my head. "I talked to Broyles. He said you can carry it if you want, once you qualify with it."

When she still wouldn't say anything but just kept looking at me silently, absently stroking the barrel with her fingertips, I shrugged and decided to just tell her the truth, "It made me think of you."

She had been sitting on my desk chair while she opened the box and she carefully laid the pistol back in its packing before she got up, stepped toward me, and threw her arms around me. "It's the nicest thing anyone has ever given me," she said, squeezing my neck so hard I heard a pop. "Or said about me," she added softly, and I almost sighed with relief. "Thank you," she said, somewhat redundantly, since by that point I knew I'd done the right thing.

If it had been anyone else other than Olivia I'd have sworn her eyes were a little bright when she pulled away from me, but since it was her, I knew it must have been my imagination.

It was a good thing we had a nice holiday because after New Year's the shit hit the fan.

####

The day started out okay. After Christmas, when Peter finally felt good enough to climb down the stairs without too much discomfort, he headed to their scary pit of a basement to fight with the furnace. It took several days and Walter and I learned how to say "fucking piece of shit" in five languages, but evidently giving the furnace a stern talking to in Farsi did the trick because we didn't wake up sweating next to each other anymore.

Instead I woke up pleasantly comfortable with Peter's arm resting around my waist and I thought he'd slept that way until he spoke, letting me know he was already awake.

"So we gotta go back to work today?"

I put my hand on top of his. "I've _been_ working. All the holidays were on the weekend this year. You're the one who's been lazing around the house milking the English Patient routine."

"Hey," he defended himself, "I was kidnapped for thirty-six hours and had the life-force sucked out of me." I ignored the way his voice trailed off. It told me he hadn't planned on reminding me that he was barreling toward his own death. "I'm owed a few days off, don't you think?" he finished lamely.

"And I fixed the furnace," he added a minute later when I didn't say anything.

"Uh-huh," I replied letting my tone tell him I was rolling my eyes since my back was to him.

"Well, I _did_!"

I rolled over so we were face to face and I could see him. I put my hands on his shoulders and kissed him lightly on the cheek. "Yes, you fixed the furnace."

He pulled back from me. "Your words say it, but your tone tells me you're humoring me."

The bickering was pleasant. It felt nice, like maybe what normal people might do, though God knows I had no basis for comparison. But I had other plans for his mouth this morning. I leaned in so I could tongue his collarbone and reached for his cock.

He sucked in his breath, like it was a surprise to him that I'd use sex to end an argument, and grabbed for my neck so he could devour my mouth with his own.

Just as I was parting my thighs by sliding my leg over his so he'd have a more constructive place to put his hand, the door swung open and Walter filled the doorway.

"I think we should have bacon for breakfast sometime soon. The protein would be good for all of us, don't you think?"

"Walter!" Peter's voice was so frustrated, and yet so unsurprised I couldn't help myself. I snickered. "How many times do we have to go over this? Closed door means Do Not Enter!"

"But," Walter looked genuinely confused, "it's only been five minutes, and coitus doesn't usually commence for at least ten after I hear voices, so I thought . . ."

I wasn't sure which prospect was more horrifying. That we had a routine Walter had actually _timed_ or that he spent his mornings outside the bedroom door listening to us.

"Walter!" we shouted in unison—the noise of the both of us was about the only thing that would get his attention at this point.

"Out! NOW!" Peter added, as by this point I was laughing too hard to be of much help anymore. He tossed a pillow at Walter to emphasize his point.

Walter ducked, still looking confused at what he must have imagined was our strange reaction, as the pillow sailed end-over-end into the hallway and thumped against the opposite wall. When Walter finally left, and clattered down the stairs, leaving the door wide open behind him, Peter heaved a big sigh. "I swear to Christ, I'm going to put a bell on that man. Then at least we'll have a little warning."

I flopped away from him onto my back, disappointed but not horribly so. That was one perk of having moved in with Father and Son. The lack of privacy was a negative, but the guarantee that Peter would be next to me when I went to bed tonight was definitely a plus.

####

Walter and Peter went to the lab and I headed for the field office. Nobody was watching me per se, but it never hurts to put in a little face-time so the Powers That Be remember you work there. Since my life was not in immediate danger of unraveling, I spent the morning filling out paperwork in the cubicle that used to be mine. Now though, since I was so rarely around, I shared the space with an agent so young, new, and earnest the fearsweat and gunpowder smell of Quantico still hung about him in a cloud.

He was obviously intimidated—evidently he wasn't so new he hadn't heard the wild, yet still only half-true rumors about me. He was already at the desk when I came in, and when he saw me he actually spurted the sip of coffee he was drinking back into his FBI gift shop mug. He jumped out of the seat, spilling more coffee in the process, and then stuttered apologies for thirty seconds: he was sorry, he didn't know I would be in today, we could set up a schedule if I liked, he would take himself elsewhere.

I sighed inwardly. I could explain that I'd find another place to work (the quiet and privacy of Broyles and his office sounded appealing at the moment), but he would probably sputter some more and be even more afraid that he'd offended me. Or, I could just nod and sit down because it was easier and less time-consuming.

I decided on the latter. Things were better for sure. The last three weeks or so since Peter was released from the hospital had been quiet, but I still didn't have the energy or patience to wrestle with problems that didn't really matter. In that time I had avoided my haunted apartment, abstained from unwillingly crossing over, and somehow kept Peter from skipping town or putting a bullet in his brainpan. I still hadn't managed to entirely shake the Lovecraftian dreams that were a twisted version of the Other Olivia's life, my life, and both of our fears and anxieties, but they were now manageable rather than disruptive. By my standards I was living in Arcadia and I wanted to prolong the bliss by avoiding conflict of any kind while I could.

Agent AnxiousNewGuy fluttered his papers into a messy pile and slunk away, so I resigned myself to a morning of mind and ass-numbing paper work.

I finished a little after twelve and headed out to Cambridge.

####

I had to stop by my apartment first. I needed to refill my birth control pill prescription and the number was on the adorable little pink box the pills came in. I refused to carry that ridiculous thing around, so instead I routinely popped the package out of the cover before I tucked it into my bag. The cover was still where I'd left it in my bedside table drawer.

I wanted to get back to the lab and see what progress Walter and Peter had made on the data they collected from Peter's captors, but I wanted to ensure I didn't miss a pill even more. I jogged up my front steps and retrieved my enormous pile of mail from the little overflow basket just inside the building's door.

Once inside, I couldn't quite repress a shudder at the dank little hole. Too many bad things had happened here. Peter and the Other Olivia, my personal downward spiral when I'd first come back from the Other Side, Cassandra's revelations. At least half the reason I'd been staying with Walter and Peter was that I couldn't quite bring myself to face being alone here anymore.

I headed for my room to get the prescription number. I retrieved it and was halfway back, headed out the door, reaching into my pocket for my phone to call Peter and see if I should bring lunch, when someone knocked on it firmly, yet softly.

I had no idea who it would be. All my friends, family, and acquaintances were accounted for. Or dead. And it's not like my winning personality attracts many social calls.

I opened the door.

Standing there was a slim woman, maybe in her late fifties judging by the slight streaks of grey in her hair. Her face was almost unlined and carried the smooth, haughty look of privilege. Her hair was swept up off away from her face, captured behind her in one of those styles I'd always admired for its bland, professional look, but had never had the patience to achieve with my own mop, no matter how much more appropriate it would have been for my job. Her face was composed, demure even, and she wore a pair of tailored trousers and a twinset. Somewhere the Talbot's catalogue was missing a model. If she hadn't been studying me so intently like I was an old acquaintance she couldn't quite place, I would have told her that I had an updated version of _The Watchtower_ and closed the door.

"Good afternoon," she said, her voice as smooth and sleek as her hair.

I was in a rush and so had no time for pleasantries.

"Can I help you?" I barely managed to spit out, not quite able to keep myself from checking to see if I could squeeze out of the apartment next to her and lock my door while I declined whatever it was she wanted to sell me.

The woman's lips pressed together as she looked me over carefully, a slight frown marring her cake batter face. "Olivia Dunham?" she asked, her slim back straight and her jaw clenched.

"Yes." Now I didn't bother to hide my impatience.

"I'm Elizabeth Bishop," she said as she reached behind her and pulled a little girl out from behind her legs.

Miriam.

I've had entirely too much practice schooling revulsion from my face. It only took me a split second, and then I just opened my door wide and stepped aside, gesturing them into my apartment. It's not like they were my first unannounced, interdimensional visitors.

She walked inside, taking Miriam's hand when the little girl extended it up towards hers, until they both stood in the middle of my living room.

Holy shit. It's not like I'd forgotten the first time I'd met Miriam, but she was powerful. I could feel her immediately, like innumerable prickles of heat and electricity along my muscles and nerves. She was a physical presence inside my skin, and not a welcome one, chafing against my own blood and bone, shoving the last few parts of me I could pretend were still mine aside to clear some space for herself.

I involuntarily backed away from her a little.

What in the name of multiple universes was Miriam doing here with her?

I was so afraid of the answer, I shoved any thoughts concerning that to the back of my head.

"You never stop waiting for them to come home you know," Elizabeth Bishop said, like she somehow imagined that appealing to my maternal instincts was a productive strategy.

"Why are you here?" I figured directness was the quickest way to cut the bullshit. I wasn't really interested in listening to her grieving mother routine—she and The Secretary both had known where Peter was at least since he was an adult. And the fact that she was here now meant that she'd found a way to cross over. If she'd really wanted to get to know Peter better she could have come and taken him for fucking coffee instead of cornering me in my apartment.

When she didn't say anything, I asked, "Don't you want to see Peter for yourself?" I knew Peter had seen the Secretary's wife (I couldn't quite bring myself to think of her as his mother) when he was Over There over a year ago, and yet at least since I'd been back, he hadn't mentioned her at all. Maybe he'd poured his heart out to the Other Olivia. Or maybe not. It was like Peter to talk about everything that didn't matter and nothing that did, and frankly, I'd never asked. Discussions about our individual excursions to the Other Side were off-limits between us anyway, but still, instinct told me she wasn't to be trusted. Something about this made me itch like I'd slept naked in a bed of poison oak.

Even if I ignored that Miriam was standing next to her like they belonged together, she'd come to see me, not Peter or Walter, which means she wanted something from me that they couldn't or wouldn't do for her. This alone, I reasoned, made her presence and her needs suspect, and she still hadn't said much of anything at all.

She looked around the room, silently waiting for me to ask them to sit. When I didn't, her face twitched with displeasure at my bad manners.

She didn't know the half of it. The Queen of Propriety could take as many points as she wanted off my Etiquette score. I wasn't trying to impress her.

She glanced down at my hip and I honestly didn't realize how close my hand was straying to my holstered weapon. I decided not to try and hide it. Even though I left it snapped in its holster, I rested my hand on the butt of my weapon, mostly just because I could.

The shrill of my phone split the silence that hung over us like a mushroom cloud.

Shitfuck. It was Peter. I knew it was Peter the same way I'd known she was here to bullshit me.

And she knew it too, I realized, as a tiny smile strained the corners of her mouth. My face must have given it away. She just glanced at my pocket where the phone was trilling, raising her eyebrows, asking if I was going to answer it.

If I answered the phone and Peter wanted to know where I was, I'd have to lie to him if I wanted to keep him from barreling over here with the force of a full-scale nuclear strike. If I didn't answer, he'd probably assume something terrible had happened to me.

He wouldn't be wrong.

I stood there wanting desperately for her not to see the struggle on my face. Then, I dug into my pocket and pulled out the phone and hit the "Accept" button.

"Where the hell are you?" Peter demanded. "I'm starving. Astrid's starving. I won't even tell you what Walter's told me about his digestive tract."

"It's taking a little longer than I thought," I croaked. "Maybe another half-hour?" I couldn't stop myself from looking at Elizabeth Bishop to confirm that the Meet-And-Greet from Hell wouldn't take longer than that.

"Uh-huh." Peter didn't sound convinced. I heard him draw in a sharp breath. "Olivia? Is everything okay? Tell me you'll meet me at home later if there's something wrong."

I almost laughed. Of course Peter had thought of a secret-password to use in the event of danger. He had to have been thinking about that for a while. I was pretty sure not a single one of Mister One-Ninety's points would be able to get me out of this mess.

I forced myself to chuckle into the phone, wondering where on earth I was going to put my Academy Award. "Nothing's wrong," I said. "I've just got a bunch of paperwork to finish up. Why don't you guys go ahead and order something. I'll come by later." I didn't want her knowing where Peter was, though I suspected my effort was wasted. The knowing set to her mouth suggested that she already knew everything anyway.

She didn't say anything when I hung up and stuffed the phone back in my pocket.

After that, we stared at each other for a few minutes silently. She finally gave up waiting for an invitation and sank down to perch on the very edge of one of my high-backed chairs as if touching the things in my apartment might contaminate her.

"Peter is special," she finally said, like that explained a goddamned thing.

I'd heard this story before. From the Observer, from Cassandra, especially from Walter. She'd have to get in a long line if she was going to sing me the aria of Peter's importance. I waited silently for her to say something the audience didn't already know.

"Did you know I was a scientist too?" she asked. The non-sequitur made me blink.

"I was," she said. "It's how I met Walter. Many years ago Walter and I worked together on a project to develop an organism that blended human and mechanized parts."

"The shapeshifters," I said, "You made them." I sank down on the couch across from her, my legs too shaky to hold me.

Elizabeth nodded. "Walter and I designed them together, in the late-70's. They were originally intended to function as human enhancement. Resistance to disease and injury, increased intelligence and reasoning skills, but designed so they would look like humans."

She told me this as casually as if she was describing how she chose a new wall color for her living room. Maybe _The Terminator_ never got made over there.

"Of course," she continued, "After Peter was abducted, they were redesigned for other purposes." When I just stared at her, she clarified, "So they could cross over without encountering any of the side effects. The First Wave."

"After we got married, Walter developed political ambitions." She said, as she slipped the handbag that had been looped around her shoulder to the crook of her elbow and rested it on the edge of her knees. "Politicians need wives to dress right and walk alongside them. It gives a sense of normalcy and community to the candidate." The explanation was almost rote, like she was reciting the first two lessons from the _Handbook for the Politically Ambitious _or something. "I'd scarcely even had time to comb my own hair when I was working." Her eyes flicked pointedly to my own rumpled head and makeup-free face. "But you know how it is. You can't help but share your partner's goals." She waited for me to agree.

No, I really didn't know. Peter and I were pretty consistently at loggerheads about all our goals, even the small ones, but I gave her an almost imperceptible nod in an effort to make her continue, so she went on.

"I had a hard time getting pregnant. We were on the road so often, and the mind-numbing tasks of a politician's wife pulled hard at my own needs. I missed the lab. I missed the challenge. I missed everything about being my own person."

She clasped her hands together and rested her wrists along the top of her handbag. Peter had her hands, I noticed, although a larger, masculine version of the squared knuckles and tapered fingers I saw wrapped around the bag's handles. That detail made me unreasonably angry, and I clenched my hands into tight fists. "I had never made a habit of asking for the things I needed," she was saying, "But I insisted that Walter take a year off so we could settle somewhere." She looked around my tiny, dusty apartment and her face showed she didn't like what she saw. " I also wanted to ensure we could stay somewhere long enough for me to do the work I'd need to do to get pregnant."

At my frown of confusion she smiled, and it chilled me. "I need to back up a little," she said, shifting in her seat so she was directly facing me. "What do you know about the First People?"

I shrugged and opened my hands, waving them a bit to indicate that we didn't know much, still unable to think clearly about much of anything.

"The worlds," she emphasized the plural a little too nastily, "as we know them are broken. Once, a long time ago, they were unified, but now they are divided—wrenched in half by something strong enough to shatter the fabric of reality and split it in two. The First People had access to technology we can only dream of. They were able to design and build a device so powerful it could defy the laws of Physics."

"The machine that creates and destroys worlds." I confirmed. "Why would they do that?"

"Why does any scientist do anything?" Her lips twisted in imitation of a small smile that looked about as natural on her as that fish looked comfortable riding that bicycle. She gestured softly towards me. "Why did your Walter subject you to childhood experiments and inject you with Cortexiphan?" She paused. "They did it to see if they could."

"These people—" she paused, "They weren't human, exactly. They are different." Her shift in tense didn't escape me, but she went blithely on. "I haven't been able to confirm exactly what they were. Or are. But a few of them remain. Out of time. Forever charged with watching time unfold in the direction their own scientific endeavors pointed it. I believe you call them Observers?"

"Observers? I asked, emphasizing the plural. "There's more than one?"

"Many more." She said. "They are what remains of The First People. They are not supposed to intervene. But sometimes they do. Sometimes they carefully direct a series of events. To try to set right the reality they themselves destroyed when their machine split it and time moved through space in two different directions."

She leaned a little towards me like she was about to share a closely-guarded secret. "Do you know what recombinant DNA is?"

I was tolerably certain that for whatever reason God stopped listening to my prayers a long time ago, but I pressed my luck anyway. I prayed that this story wasn't going to end the way I feared, even as I felt a black hole of nauseous dismay scour out the pit of my stomach. I'd hung on the edges of Walter and Peter's conversations in the lab enough over the last three years to know that, in our lives, when talk turned to recombinant DNA, the situation usually turned ugly pretty quickly.

But I managed to say, "I know they are manipulated genetic sequences combined from two different animals. Used to genetically alter organisms in ways that nature never intended them to be."

She rearranged her knees, shifting her hips and pressing them together on the other side of her body, looking more like she was sitting at an afternoon tea rather than explaining why the worlds were collapsing into each other. "Yes," she confirmed. "Close enough. I'd add that when you alter the series of nucleotides in a genome—" she paused and looked at her hands, searching for a word, "— _carefully_, the altered sequences aren't manifest. They live in the background."

There was that word again. Careful, my ass. I wanted to smash my fist into her arrogant face.

_Carefully_, of course. Right then and there I almost pulled Peter's gift on her and shattered that knowing look on her face with a .45. I imagined how her crumpled body would look on the floor after I'd reduced it to a twinset accented with bone shards. I took a moment to savor how satisfying it would be to add her blood and tissue to the stains my carpet was collecting like merit badges.

She reached into her handbag, pulled out a piece of paper, and slid it across the coffee table toward me. I barely glanced at it before I recognized it as the drawing of Peter inside the Wave-Sink device.

She gestured to the symbols lined up in the image's background. "That is Peter's DNA. Sequences of two cells combining to make one—a whole new person." I narrowed my eyes at her threateningly. I didn't need a fucking lecture on reproduction, especially if she was going to do it in the awed-scientist voice I associated with one of Walter's more embellished, semi-plausible fantasies. If she shared details about The Secretary's genitals, I really _was_ going to shoot her and just lie to Peter about it later.

She tapped on one sequence with a perfectly manicured nail. "Do you see this here? This is wrong." She tapped on another sequence on the other side of the image. "And this." She pointed at the final sequence in the bottom right-hand corner, "And this. These sequences aren't found in humans."

I dug my fingernails into my palms, squeezing my hands a little tighter to keep her from seeing how my hands were shaking.

"What did you do?" Even if I'd wanted to, I was incapable of hiding the contempt in my voice, "Did you _recombine_ Peter's genetic material?" I could feel myself shaking and I desperately wished anger hadn't made my voice so tremulous.

She sat up a little straighter before she snapped, "Don't look down your nose at me young lady. I— " she paused, seeming to search for words, "I corrected abnormalities to our DNA, Walter's and mine, to make them viable. My eggs are diploid, which means they contain twice the number of chromosomes necessary for a viable embryo. Added to that, Walter contracted the mumps in puberty. His sperm, though healthy, isn't agile. These conditions together would have made conception and the development of an embryo impossible for us.

I really didn't want to know anymore. What I already knew would make it impossible for me to look Peter in the eye ever again. I gripped my knees and leaned forward, steeling myself for her reply. I gritted my teeth as the words slipped out, hard and sharp as cut glass, "What did you use?"

She looked for a minute like she might not answer me. She pulled the drawing back towards her and folded it carefully, slipping it back into her handbag. "An Observer," she finally said, so quietly I thought I'd heard her wrong.

It could have been worse, I suppose. She could have told me she used a salamander.

"Are you telling me Peter's father is an Observer?"

"No," she countered immediately. I am Peter's mother and Walter is his father. Our genetic material made up over 99% of Peter's DNA."

I still wasn't impressed. In my life anyway, blood runs a good deal thinner than water—mostly, it just wrecks havoc with my laundry habits.

"The Observers approached me. I'm not exactly clear on their reasons. They offered to help with our reproductive problems. I didn't know anything about multiple worlds or The First People then."

When she saw what was surely disgust on my face, for a moment something shifted in her eyes so quickly I thought I must have imagined it because a second later they were as blank and cold as marble. "The DNA from the Observers is probably what saved Peter as a child. His illness was incurable, you know. The little boy over here died from it."

Her mouth thinned into a tight line. "It hardly matters now. I'm not asking you to understand," she said, skimming her eyes over me. The way she looked at me made me want to check my fingernails for dirt and my teeth for leftover food scraps. "Understanding doesn't really seem to be your strong point anyway.

There wasn't a response that didn't involve violence so I said nothing. And even though I guessed they weren't close, I was pretty sure Peter would never forgive me if I killed his mother

"You could say that Walter's goals and my own—diverged many years ago." She paused as if thinking, choosing her words carefully. "My husband has the luxury of being able to pursue his own interests," she said. "Walter knows very little about Peter's purpose. I never told him about the Observers or Peter's altered DNA. Walter believes that all the mistakes your Dr. Bishop made when he abducted Peter can be rectified if your world is destroyed. He's so angry and bitter he's lost sight of what the machine is for in the first place. In the last few years, I've developed and designed a group of shapeshifters to oppose his." Her jaw clenched momentarily, and I thought I saw a miniscule chink in her doll-faced armor.

"Cassandra?" I asked.

She nodded. Cassandra was designed to care for the insurance I created in the event that something should happen to Peter.

She glanced almost imperceptivity at Miriam, still sitting next to her silent and serene as one of the guardians of the gates of hell. Her eyes were such a bright, clear blue they looked artificial in contrast to her dark hair. I could still feel her crawling around my insides and it didn't improve my temperament one bit.

I just sat there, struggling to breathe, distracted because the voice in my head that is always screaming set on a refrain of _No, No, No, No, No, No_, making me wish desperately that she'd stop so the voice could stop. But she didn't. "I've miscalculated how the machine works," she said crisply as if she'd done something regrettably inconvenient, like worn a coat that clashed with her shoes. In the same tone she elaborated, "I created the four children in the hopes that one of them would be able to run the machine. After their gestation and birth, the children were brought over to This Side to ensure their safety. Cassandra watched over them when they were placed for adoption. She has been working for me, ensuring that the children were cared for and received the right education and training. That's why we designed the school and staffed it with our own people."

She sighed with what on a real person might have sounded like regret. "The instabilities in both worlds are growing unmanageable, however. We've had to test the children's abilities sooner than we would have liked. Unfortunately, though, we've only recently learned that the children, although they share Peter's DNA, are not capable of powering the machine. Believe me, I've tried. I've tried everything I could think of." She shook her head in delicate revulsion. "I even resorted to that crude concoction your Dr. Bishop made, Cortexiphan. But nothing has worked. The children can't run the machine. And of course now they've been returned to their adoptive parents—except for Miriam, who is the strongest."

"Why don't they work?" I asked. "What is it about them that's different?"

"It has to be Peter, I've learned," she replied. "Not his body. Not his DNA. _Him_. His mind. His emotions. His experiences. His consciousness, if you must. Nothing else will work. Peter is the only one who is of both worlds. Because he is of both worlds, he is the only one who can reunite them.

"But he's not—" I started.

"Why do you think I left him here?" She looked away from me and her face creased with repugnance. "You don't understand, do you? Why do you think that little boy over here had to die? There is and can only _be_ one Peter. He was born to us Over There, but he's _from_ here." She glanced at me and I thought I saw a flash of anguish in the backs of her eyes. "And he always will. This is his home."

"But Cassandra said he had to choose," I told her.

"Cassandra wasn't wrong. She just wasn't privy to all the information. Some of this I've only just learned. We thought for years that Peter would simply _choose_ one world, go there, and that world would survive—no matter how little sense that makes. We've only discovered in the last five years or so that the worlds were once unified, and that what was making them spin out of their likely courses was that they were, in fact, hurtling away from each other—further separating what was never meant to be split—moving farther and farther apart as time goes on, in spite of the fact that they stayed similar."

"A snowball rolling downhill."

"Yes. A snowball of improbable events, gathering more improbable variables as it goes. But Peter has the power to bind the two universes back together"

A sudden realization made a cold sweat break out all over my body and my eyes flicked back to Miriam. "You said you tried everything—" my voice trailed off. "_You_! You took him." I had to shove my hands in my pockets to keep them from wrapping themselves around her aristocratic throat since I'd already decided that a bullet wasn't nearly intimate enough for how I planned to kill her. "Why?"

"It doesn't matter now."

"Doesn't matter? Doesn't _matter_!" Something about her demeanor grew even more cold and tight at the shrillness in my voice. "You nearly killed him. Did you know that? He almost died. What then? Who would run your One-Machine-to-Rule-Them-All then?"

Her lips twitched as if trying to decide whether to smile or frown. "Whatever you think of me, of the choices I made, the fact remains that Peter has to power that machine."

"That's never going to happen," I told her. It was true. I wasn't sure what we were going to do, but I'd decided weeks ago as Cassandra leaked blood and liquid metal all over my apartment that there was no way I was letting Peter within 100 miles of that machine. Not while I was still breathing, anyway. There was a greater than eighty percent chance I'd have to put a bullet in him to keep him from it, but at this point, intentionally shooting Peter would only barely register on my scale of Actionable Problems. At least now, I was a good enough shot I could be sure I wouldn't do Peter any permanent damage. Keeping Peter away from the machine was one of the few things Walter and I had ever agreed on, just as we'd wordlessly agreed to keep that aim to ourselves.

She smiled at me like an indulgent parent smiles at a particularly obstinate child. "Now, I know you are surrounded by geniuses, and maybe that makes you look a bit dimmer than you already are. And I know you think you may be able to use some of your Cortexiphan powers to help Peter, but The Observers interfered in the first place because this must happen. It already has happened, in all possible ways, just as Cassandra told you."

I couldn't stop my mouth from hanging open at her. She completely ignored it of course and said, "I know all about you. I know what you're capable of." Something dark flickered across her patrician face and then disappeared.

She gave a harsh little laugh. "For years I'd dressed right and said the right things and walked alongside of Walter as he rose in the political ranks. He knows little about my, shall we say,—side projects." She eyed me speculatively. "Although, I make it my business to know all about his."

I'd halfway guessed that she knew who I was. She knew what The Secretary had done to me when I was on the Other Side, and she knew they sent the other Olivia over here to take over my life. She knew I'd brought the boys back from the place out of time they'd been hidden, and that I'd tried to collect Miriam at the same time.

I smiled right back at her with what I knew was that special blend of recklessness and determination that usually made Broyles want to transfer me to Dubuque and always made Peter want to handcuff me to something heavy until the madness passed.

"Look, I went to college. I read _Oedipus_, I saw _Macbeth._ 'No man of woman born,' and all that. And I get it. Really, I do. But you can bet I'm not about to let Peter go gentle into that good night." I watched with pleasure as her motionless face fell a little at the hard edge of hysteria I heard creeping along the corners of my voice.

"You think you know me because you know someone who _looks_ like me? And because you sent her here to live my life?" I asked, since un-questions seemed to be the rhetorical choice for the day. "Your side started this war. You think I'm not cuddly now?" I added, since by this point I was enjoying my soliloquy because it allowed me to maintain the façade of control over the situation. "I don't have a lot of people left, but what I have I aim to keep. And just in case you were curious, that includes Peter."

"I'm here to explain to you why this is necessary. You have to give me access to Peter. Both of the worlds will die if Peter doesn't power the machine— "

"Forget it," I cut her off. I didn't even want to be in the same room with her anymore. "Spare me your Bride-of-Frankenstein plans. There is no middle ground here. We will figure out a way to protect Peter and the worlds without having to—"

A sudden warning prickled through my body. Something entirely different than Miriam's colonization or even what was surely my own encroaching madness. I stood up and arched my senses in the direction of Peter, not caring that they could both watch me do it.

Something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong, though I couldn't locate the direction or the source. I looked at Miriam, since at that moment she felt as much a part of me as my own tissue and nerves. Waves of fear and confusion and dread rolled in from every direction and almost knocked me flat. It took me split second to realize that it wasn't coming from her, but she was accentuating it and hurling it my direction with the subtly of a flamethrower.

I looked at Elizabeth Bishop uncertainly for a moment. Then, I looked at Miriam and she blinked at me while we had a staring contest and communed at the astral level.

I still wasn't consciously certain what I was doing, or why, when I reached out my hand toward Miriam.

I barely noticed how Elizabeth Bishop's face paled when Miriam's hand, as if in slow-motion, headed towards and curled into mine. I flinched at her touch. Her power coursed through me, growing to ten times what Melek had been able to send. Her impossibly delicate little-girl fingers disappeared into my own, and my organs felt like they'd swelled to past their capacity.

The entire process took less than a second.

Then, still on auto-pilot, I started moving, pulled in the direction of the lab, tugging Miriam behind me, uncaring that I should confine or restrain Elizabeth Bishop.

Miriam and I were out the door and headed to the T station before I even began to consciously comprehend my actions.

Hands linked, we descended to the station and rode the train as if in a dream. Without speaking, Miriam explained to me how Elizabeth had cornered me with the promise of information as a distraction so she could take another stab at getting at Peter. I could feel how confused Miriam was with who she'd become, how uncertain she was of her new-found powers that pushed her to the edge of madness, how, standing in my half-bare apartment, she'd felt she belonged to me and she'd made her choice.

Of course, not one of those things should a little girl have been able to understand, but I was grateful for her help all the same.

As I sat side-by-side with Miriam barreling through the underground darkness, I felt as if I were on the margins of something profound and terrible, a bead of dye clinging to the edge of its dropper, unsure of falling, terrorized of dispersing into the expansive madness of the water below.

A flutter in my fingers and I looked down at Miriam who, somehow, was running alongside me up the walkway outside the door to the lab. We had exited the station and arrived the few blocks to the building as if slashing through the black and white squares of an un-inked comic book—the world harsh and uncolored in a way that seemed particularly suited for the way the grey winter's afternoon light slanted its weight on both of us. A tentative smile pulled at Miriam's lips that made her look almost like a little girl again when she opened herself to me, and I almost stumbled with the force of it. It was disturbing and comforting all at once, neither emotion did I have the time to analyze as we swept with finality of death down the basement stairs and into the lab.

They were already there. Astrid folded against a table, Walter restrained and wailing from the back office, a handful of them holding Peter as he hollered and thrashed. Miriam pulled away, circling to the other side of the room so she could widen the arc of destruction. I felt her force herself into me and crack me open, a steamed crab in the hands of a gourmet.

The first wave of energy seemed to originate from somewhere right under my ribcage, sparked by a jagged stream of electricity that ran from the base of my neck and down my spine until it lit up my midsection with energy and light. It battled and won an internal war against pain and nausea as it merged with the force of my ire, then burst from my ribs and bled out into the world with the scalding violence of blood.

Then, like it was happening to someone else, I watched as one of the men holding Peter roared and caught fire.


	10. Chapter 10

**Sum over Histories**

by MVariorum

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><p><strong>Summary<strong>: Olivia comes back. Olivia and Peter save the world. Again.  
><strong>Pairings<strong>: Peter/Olivia  
><strong>Rating<strong>: M. So kiddies, the faint of heart, and those with refined taste should scoot along elsewhere. You have been warned.  
><strong>Story Notes<strong>: Please accept my preemptive apologies for the pseudo-pseudoscience. Not a scientist. Sadly, I'm not even a pseudoscientist. Never will be.  
><strong>Disclaimer<strong>: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.  
><strong>Chapters<strong>: ?  
><strong>Completed<strong>: No  
><strong>Spoilers<strong>: AU after early season 3 (more or less around _Do Shapeshifters Dream of Electric Sheep?). _Includes some elements of the early part of Season 3, but no spoilers beyond that.

* * *

><p><strong>AN**: As always, thank you to all who read and reviewed. I sincerely appreciate all comments on this now monster-sized story. We're definitely on the back-half of this baby and the end is in sight. I'll probably try to conclude right around the time Season 4 starts, which isn't all that far away now. I'll warn you that the next update may be delayed because RL will keep me irritatingly busy for the next couple of weeks, but by the third week of August it should be smooth sailing around here.

Deep and wide thanks to starg8fans who did the beta.

**Chapter 10 / ?**

When Olivia barreled into the lab, making both doors slam behind her against their opposite walls, she looked so much like a superhero fighting the forces of evil, I regretted she didn't have a bustier or skintight spandex to complete the look. If I hadn't already had the shit kicked out of me, I would have stood up and cheered.

Until, of course, the man restraining me burst into flame. Then I just wanted to run.

There were six of them and it started with the minion who was trying to restrain my arms behind my back with a zip-tie, (what else?) so his partner could drug me with the needle he dangled over my face. Olivia barely glanced in my direction, and the next thing I knew the man screamed with pain, or fright, or both, and clutched his chest a millisecond before it exploded into flames. When he started to run towards the doorway where Olivia was still standing—evidently he didn't listen to the firefighters in kindergarten who explained Stop, Drop, and Roll—he didn't even get halfway there before it looked like he ran into an invisible wall with the bone crunching force of a Crash Test Dummy. When I glanced past his crumpled flaming body, I registered briefly that Olivia's hand was outstretched in his direction doing an imitation of Diana Ross singing _Stop in the Name of Love_.

Since my hands were now free, I busied myself with the other two guys still restraining me. I braced myself with my hands and kicked the one trying to tie my feet in the nads and then turned to address the one coming towards me with a needle. He headed my way with a gleam in his eyes, but he was slow, and obviously not terribly bright. I faked to the right, and when he leaned, I hit him with my left, feeling the satisfying crunch of his cheekbone under my fist. It had been months since I got the chance to shatter someone's face with my own hands and almost immediately I felt better. As he crumpled to the ground, the needle rolled out of his hand. I grabbed it, stabbed a grapefruit Walter had sitting on one of the tables, pushed the plunger, and stamped the fruit under my heel. I wanted to ensure that no one I cared about found themselves on the business end of that needle.

By the time all that was done, the lab was nearly engulfed in flames. Walter was still hollering from the back room and I scanned the room to see if I could count the bodies of the minions.

I looked up towards the door and saw Olivia still standing where she'd stopped after the doors slammed open and she took three steps into the lab. Even through the fire I could see she had the concentrated look she got when she was working hard with her mind. I'd seen it enough through the fuzzy camera in the Tank to recognize it now from orbit.

I followed Olivia's line of vision as she looked across the room at a little girl whose face had the placid sereneness of china-doll, though now it glowed orange in the light of the flames licking around her. The perfectly curled dark ringlets of her hair and pale, vitreous eyes didn't hurt the comparison either. It had to be Miriam, I guessed, even though I could only see the top of her head from where I was standing. It couldn't be anyone else, though what the hell she was doing trailing behind Olivia into the lab at a time like this was completely beyond me. Unless she'd started carrying candy around in her pocket, Olivia doesn't really have the kind of demeanor that attracts small girls to her side, which was one of her more attractive qualities if you asked me.

I counted flaming bodies. One, two, three near me. Four and five over near Miriam. I think there had been six when they came in, but maybe I miscounted.

I took two steps toward the back room where Walter was, thinking I'd head back there to get him untied. I got distracted when I almost tripped over Astrid piled against a table on the floor. I reached into my pocket for my phone to dial 911, since we were obviously going to need some professional assistance with the fire. As I dialed my three favorite numbers, I prayed Olivia could turn the fire off as easily as she turned it on. I had just started to bend down to see if Astrid was okay when things went south very, very fast.

Olivia turned in the direction of the back room just as I started to kneel next to Astrid when the final minion popped his head out of the door with some kind of weapon raised toward Olivia.

I wasn't entirely sure what happened, even long after the fact and I had some time to think about it. I knew the man was going to be engulfed in flames just as his friends had, but I also knew without conscious thought that behind him in the corner by the office door was where we stored the gas tanks. I knew this because it was always me, not Walter, who lugged them around the lab and back to their corner-storage when we used them.

It unfolded before my eyes just as I imagined. The guy exploded in fire and Olivia began taking her long-strided steps toward the back door to retrieve Walter right about the time I started sprinting across the lab toward the minion who was stumbling dangerously close to the stash of gas tanks.

"Olivia!" I screamed her name, but didn't have much hope she could hear me over the roar of the fire and the hum of her own single-mindedness. I leaped up the stairs, my feet not touching them at all, rounded the corner, and headed toward Olivia and the flaming man who was uselessly clutching his chest, like somehow that was going to improve matters for him.

"The tanks!" I hollered when I got close enough I thought Olivia would be able to hear me.

Two steps later I had passed her by, though she took off after me, responding more to the urgency in my voice and movements than to any comprehensive idea of what was going on.

"Shitshitshitshit," I Rain-Manned, since no one could hear me anyway and it's not like in the face of impending explosion anyone would expect me to utter a speech in blank-verse.

"Get Walter," I screamed at Olivia as I unhooked the first of four tanks and tried to drag it out the door.

It only took Olivia a second to catch up to the newest, yet very real problem we now faced. Her eyes were wide, the pupils dilated so much I couldn't see any color in her irises anymore. She whipped in the direction of Miriam who still stood still on the other side of the room and, as if my day wasn't already weird enough, I watched as they conducted a wordless game of telephone across the expanse of the flaming room.

I started dragging one tank. When Olivia was finished doing the mind-meld with Miriam, she followed my example and dragged one behind me. Out of the corner of my eye I watched Miriam walk toward Astrid and shake her awake, using some kind of power to rouse her for all I knew. Whatever it was, it worked, and through the smoke and flames I saw Astrid's tiny outline stand and stumble towards the door. Miriam calmly walked up toward us, passed us by, and went into the back room like she walked through walls of fire every day of her life. A second later, I heard the choral tones of Walter's gratitude wrapping around the edges of the insistent sound of roaring flames.

They passed us by on the way out as I thumped the tanks up the stairs, Olivia doing the same beside me. We got the tanks out in the hall, and I motioned with my hand we should return and get the other two, reasoning that all our work would be for naught if the flames reached those tanks and we detonated along with the rest of the building. Both of us sweating and swearing, we had just dragged the remaining two tanks to the stairs when the firefighters rushed in.

I knew Astrid, Walter, and Miriam were safe, so once I explained with gestures and screams what was going on, I resolved I'd had enough heroics for one day and decided to leave the rest to the professionals. I grabbed Olivia's hand and tugged her out the door behind me, only letting go when we reached fresh air. Walter, Astrid, and Miriam were standing on the little knoll outside the lab and I took a few steps toward them, planning on joining them to watch our home-away-from-home burn to a crisp in the winter air.

"Well, that was bracing," I cracked, slowing to look over my left shoulder, fully expecting to see Olivia's tired smile shatter through her soot-covered face behind me.

What I saw instead was Olivia's head hit the ground, following swiftly behind the rest of her body about two feet outside the burning building.

####

The next twenty-four hours were only marginally less hair-raising than the ones preceding them.

After Olivia slid to the ground with the grace and style of a bowlful of Jell-o, I raced back to her side, ignoring the little voice in my head that told me running back _toward_ a burning building filled with toxic chemicals was not what sane people did, and shoved my arms under her shoulders to drag her away.

To the everlasting gratitude of my back and thighs, the paramedics had seen her topple right about the same time I did, and they reached her side with a gurney about five seconds after me.

They loaded her on it with appropriate professional dispassion while I stumbled alongside clutching her limp hands in my own, babbling to them about what it was I thought might be wrong with her, after amending the facts to make them suitable for All Audiences.

Long story short. I told them I thought she might have been struck by lightning.

With true New England fortitude the paramedics ignored the fact that it was the dead of winter, that Cambridge's over-developed tundra hadn't seen a thunderstorm in the months, and that Olivia had been inside the building when it happened. They nodded reassuringly at me. Meanwhile, they gave Olivia the same care-worn once-over they probably did to every poor schmuck that landed in the back of their squad for whatever reason.

After they covered her with the thermal blanket, checked her vitals, and strung an IV up for her, Olivia stirred and sat up drunkenly. I really expected little tendrils of smoke to come curling out of her ears, nose, and mouth, like in a horror film when a demon vacates the lead's body.

But no. She just focused her eyes first on the paramedics, then on me. When she finally recognized me after a heart-stopping few seconds she raised her eyebrows at me: _Where the fuck am I, and what is happening?_

I just shrugged at her silent question, gesturing lamely at the squad, the EMT's, the equipment. When the young, female paramedic came at her with the IV catheter, however, Olivia swiveled toward her and shot her a look that would have turned cream.

I shifted in uncomfortable sympathy for the young woman. I'd been on the receiving end of that stare enough to know the distress it caused. The male EMT's lips twisted at our silent communication. He was older, more careworn, and when I glanced at his hand, I noticed he wore a ring. He had someone at home doling out looks like that, I'd bet my share of next month's dividends on it.

Olivia made to stand, and to my surprise, she actually managed it. Waving off the tinkling warnings of both EMT's, she scribbled her name at the bottom of the AMA form they shoved her way and then stumbled out of the squad toward where Broyles was already standing in the distance with one of his enormous hands dwarfing the top of Miriam's head.

I didn't want to leave her, but I did it anyway. While Olivia stayed to play FBI in-charge. I shuttled first Astrid, then Walter home.

Walter went to bed immediately. He was so tired, or so afraid of what would happen when Olivia came home, he didn't even snack beforehand. I settled on the couch, pretended to read, and waited.

Three hours later, she stumbled into the entryway looking like she'd been on the losing end of a back-alley brawl.

She leaned heavily on me while I slipped her coat off her shoulders and then guided her up the stairs. She sank onto the bed and fumbled halfheartedly with her clothes, managing to slip off her jacket and yank at a couple of button on her blouse before she collapsed over on her side, her feet still resting on the ground. I undressed myself and then finished undressing her, rolling her motionless body around on the bed to remove her clothes and shovel her under the covers.

I climbed into bed beside her and enclosed her with my body as best I could, reasoning that she wasn't conscious and was therefore unlikely to complain about what she called my "constrictor-like cuddling."

Only when she was tucked in tight next to me, my body curled around hers like the shell of a conch, did I recognize that, for the first time perhaps ever, I was a little afraid of her. I've always been very aware that Olivia could kick my ass if she wanted to, but in the past I'd chosen to focus on how erotic it was that she was female, angry, and armed. I'd never considered the possibility that she would turn her considerable powers _on_ me. But since I'd just gotten a front-row seat to Olivia setting a half-dozen men and a stone building on fire (with only slight assistance from flammable substances of the lab) it was suddenly hard to ignore that the woman breathing evenly alongside me had fulfilled Walter and Bell's aspirations beyond their wildest wet-dreams. She was a killer, and an efficient one at that.

I'd always wondered if there was a connection between the Cortexiphan children's personalities and their abilities. Walter and Bell just wanted to push their subjects to see if they could make them do unthinkable things. It had only partly been about preparing guardians for the gate to the Other Side, and as usual they didn't trouble themselves much about the details. From what I'd seen, the Cortexiphan subjects' abilities seemed as unique as each individual.

Fire was fierce, indiscriminate, purifying. Just as I dropped off to sleep I considered that maybe that's what made it so attractive to Olivia.

####

Olivia didn't wake up the next morning. Or the next. Or the next.

She slept almost straight through for nearly three days.

By the afternoon of the third day, I had left concern far behind me in a cloud of dust on the dirt road of panic. I was embracing full-blown hysteria, fearing she'd never wake again. For at least the amount of time I'd had the opportunity to share a bed with Olivia (admittedly, before the last few weeks the occasions had been infrequent) I'd never known her to sleep for more than a few hours at a stretch. I'd never before slept with someone who was so restless, so unable to quiet their mind for even a few moments in order to fall asleep, so incapable of preventing night horrors from swamping their consciousness. Anyone sleeping for three days was cause for concern; when Olivia did it she may as well have bled out in front of me, so certain I was that she was dying.

By the afternoon of the third day I had advanced deep into desperate-times-call-for-desperate-measures territory. I didn't take her somewhere to get checked out not only because I was afraid to move her, but because I honestly didn't know what I'd tell the doctors if I did.

Because I was fresh out of options, I called an old friend who was a doctor. I felt like I could tell her slightly more of the truth than I could some random urgent-care doctor, and I hoped she'd be more likely to tolerate my half-truths and take on simple faith that something was wrong. As a bonus, I figured the exam wouldn't go in Olivia's medical file. I guessed she didn't want Broyles to know how debilitated she was unless absolutely necessary, and I figured an off-the-record house-call was the most efficient way to determine if it was worth the risk of seeking more comprehensive medical attention.

It had been years since I'd seen Akhila and I wasn't sure she was even still in the area, let alone if she would agree to help me. It took me a half a day's phone calls to find her, but it wasn't like Olivia was going anywhere.

Akhila was an Indian woman, no bigger than a minute with liquid brown eyes and wavy, waist-length hair. She'd been my TA when I'd impersonated a professor, had co-authored the articles I'd published, and shortly after I'd been dismissed and then arrested, she'd sworn off chemistry for med school, much to her aristocratic parent's dismay who expected her to finish her Master's and come home to marry the man they'd chosen for her.

When I opened the door for her it was well into the night. Her hair was gone, chopped off a little North of her chin and she was so pregnant I wasn't sure how she remained upright with the weight of her belly that looked like she was all baby from her shoulders to her knees.

"Akhila," I stuttered, "You look— umm—fertile?" It was the only think I could think of to say when there was so much stomach stretched between us my arm couldn't span the distance to touch her shoulder and guide her into the house.

"And you still have a smart mouth, James," she replied. Her eyes were the same. Soft brown and kind, though guarded now when she looked at me.

I motioned her into the house, noting that she scarcely looked pregnant from behind. Though her gait wobbled a little, I could see even under the knapsack she had slung on her shoulder that her back still had the same straight pride I remembered from years ago.

She stopped when she was inside our entryway and turned to look at me. Her eyes flickered around our house, noting the shadows the TV cast in the living room where Walter laid stretched out on the couch asleep and the number of coats hanging in the entry and shoes piled under them. I could see her eyes counting the potential occupants of this house before they returned to mine.

"Well James, I suppose it could have been stranger if Moses had phoned asking for help, but not by much," she remarked, waiting for me to fill in the blanks.

She was still gorgeous, pregnant belly and all I noticed. We'd never slept together, not that we both hadn't been tempted. I'd spent more than a fair share of my imaginative life at the time fantasizing about her coffee-with-cream skin and the compassion that always glowed in the backs of her eyes when she looked at me. But something had always stopped the both of us. I'd always feared that sleeping with her would have erased the understanding I'd seen there; not pity exactly, because that would have been unwelcome, but some kind of comprehensive kindness regarding how and why I seemed to do little other than ooze arrogant, mouthy, charm. And I suspected that the promise of all my swaggering grins wasn't quite tempting enough to make her willing to help me lug my baggage around, even for a little while.

"Um. It's Peter, actually," I told her, because it seemed best to lie only as much as I absolutely had to.

She actually smiled. "Of course it is."

I fidgeted nervously, still hovering next to the door I'd just closed.

Her hands were stuffed in the pockets of her unbuttoned coat and she moved her arms restlessly, still looking around the house like she was trying to figure out how I landed in this warped little domestic tableau. The movement made the flaps of her coat swing wide around her. She looked up at me from under her eyelashes. "Honestly?"

"Yeah," I told her trying to maintain eye-contact because I wanted her to believe me. "I go by my real name now."

I heard a rustling noise in the living room and almost groaned when Walter's fast-moving body headed our direction.

"Peter," he practically yelled. "I have to piss."

"Upstairs, Walter."

Akhila stood stock-still, her eyes shifting rapidly as she took in Walter's shuffling gait and my frozen form. I sighed. May as well just get it out of the way. "That's my father," I explained, gesturing vaguely up the stairs at Walter's fast-retreating rear end. "He lives here with me. He likes to give constant updates."

Thank you for coming," I added, since it was about the only thing left to say at that point.

"I know you wouldn't have called unless it was important." Was that just a little bit of hurt hanging around the wry edges of her tone? I shuffled away from the door, anxious about asking a favor, but fear for Olivia's condition more than overwhelmed that anxiety.

She looked around a little impatiently. "Where is she?" she finally asked when I didn't say anything.

I led Akhila upstairs into my room, nervously babbling re-explanations along the way that Olivia was a friend and the nature of her profession made it difficult for her to seek medical assistance in a way that would leave a record.

Inside my room, Akhila scanned the walls pasted with bits of weird science; her eyes took in my desk covered with parts of both outdated and otherworldly technology and the women's clothing draped around the room and spilling out of the wardrobe whose gaping doors we had to navigate around to get to Olivia's side of the bed.

Akhila advanced to the side of my bed and looked down at Olivia's sleeping form. "And what happened to her?"

I swallowed. "She was struck by lightning," I told her, but the look she shot me told me she didn't believe me.

"Mmm-hmm," was all she said, sliding her bag off her shoulder, waving at me to bring her a seat. I headed for my rolling desk chair, and then thought better of it when I glanced at her body. If she got in there, I wasn't sure she'd be able to get up again, so I headed into one of the spare rooms for something seat-like without wheels, first running downstairs to get the blood work results Walter had run daily while we waited for Olivia to recover.

When I got back to my room a few minutes later with the chair and the papers Akhila was holding something in her hand. As I moved closer to her to open up the chair I could see it wasn't anything she'd taken from her bag.

She laughed a loud, tinkling laugh, unabashedly at my expense. "An FBI agent, _Peter_?" she said, emphasizing my new-to-her first name, waving Olivia's badge under my nose, completely unashamed that she'd poked around in the bedside table drawer where Olivia kept her weapon and her ID. "Jesus. I figured she was a call girl with a pissed-off pimp, or a dealer or something." She shook her head at me. "I always knew you could charm a grandmother out of her knickers, but I swear, you do take the cake. I didn't think anything you'd do would surprise me, but I was wrong."

When I didn't say anything she went on, "How in the name of all that's holy did you get involved with an FBI agent?"

She tossed the badge back onto the bedside table and sank into the chair I stuck behind her. "Tell me what happened. For real, now. I can't help if you don't tell me the truth."

"Honestly, Akhila, you wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"Try me," she ordered as she busied herself running her fingers over Olivia's scalp, checking for wounds.

I told her as much as I thought I reasonably could, explaining that Olivia had been exposed to a large amount of electro-magnetic energy (which was actually true, as Walter and I discovered when we'd run our own tests), that her blood work looked clean to me, that Olivia wasn't one much for sleep and never had been, and yet she'd been asleep for days, that she didn't seem to be in any pain, that I'd only been able to rouse her for a few seconds each day to coax some fluids in her, and that I was fearful that she might never wake again.

I left out the part where Olivia's dreams made her twitch and writhe and sob, and that not even pulling her against me, wrapping my arms around her, and murmuring endearments she'd never permit if she were conscious soothed her. Akhila's face was thoughtful as I told my heavily redacted narrative, but even I could hear the shrill desperation in my voice. I also knew Akhila noticed how my eyes kept straying to Olivia as I spoke.

Akhila finished her exam and turned to me. "I know these are all things you already knew, but she has no fever, her vitals are stable, she has no outward signs of physical trauma, and she doesn't seem to be in any pain." She shuffled through the papers with Olivia's blood-work on them. "Everything here looks normal. I'm not really sure what to tell you."

I sat down on the edge of the bed, near Olivia's bent legs and I scrubbed my face and neck with my hands. "Is there any psychological or emotional reason why she might be sleeping?" Akhila asked softly. "Maybe there's something her conscious mind doesn't want to face?" Her tone was soothing. She addressed me like you would speak to an injured or frightened animal.

I was so upset I told Akhila the truth. "Always," I confessed, "But she's never done this before," knowing that the confession gave away far more than I would have liked about our relationship, our work, and our lives.

That was the worst part. Not being able to tell if what was happening to Olivia was a physiological effect of her re-discovered pyrotechnic skills, or if it was a psychological shutdown in response to this newest calamity. But that was the puzzling part. Obviously turning into a psychic weapon wasn't a field day, not the kind of thing anyone really wished for, but to the best of my understanding it also wasn't very far up Olivia's scale of Large Problems. Was there something else that happened I was missing? Or, had this merely been the straw that broke Olivia's violated back? With her unconscious on the bed, it was impossible to tell.

I swallowed loudly in the silent room, and Akhila reached out and put her hand on my knee. "I'll give her something to see if it can wake her up." At my alarmed look, Akhila just smiled. "Nothing major, just a low-dose stimulant—the kind of thing they give narcolepsy patients." She reached into her well-stocked bag and removed a syringe and vial while I readjusted my thinking to allow that Akhila was actually a licensed physician and, unlike Walter, was probably only going to administer chemicals that had been approved by the FDA.

When she saw my clenched fists, she handed me the vial so I could see what it was. "Modafinil," I said, like it meant something to me. I knew little about legal drugs since Walter engineered and administered his own and I myself was almost never sick. I handed the bottle back to her and watched her fill the syringe. She looked at me and waited. While I was considering that Akhila probably wasn't a minion from the Dark Side of the Force since I hadn't spoken to her in over five years and it was unlikely anyone could have predicted I'd call her for help, she put the medicine down and reached back into her bad and pulled out a prescription tablet. She scribbled on it for a moment, tore the slip off.

She picked up the vial and syringe again, still patiently waiting for me to give the go-ahead. I finally nodded at her and then watched carefully as she injected Olivia and deposited the needle in the sharps box she also produced from her bag. She handed me the prescription and asked, "Does she take anything else?" When I nodded in the negative she said, "These are 100 mg tablets. She can take up to four safely. I just gave her a full dose."

Akhila stood and shoved the chair behind her with the backs of her legs, squatting uncomfortably to retrieve her bag from the floor. "Start with two tablets tomorrow if she's still groggy." She put a hand on my shoulder. "If she isn't awake by tomorrow morning, you're going to need to take her to a hospital."

I nodded as Akhila took two steps toward the door. After one last glance in Olivia's direction, I followed her out of my room and down the stairs.

Walter was back on the couch when Akhila and I got downstairs. He didn't move when we came down, and I gave thanks that he seemed to have passed out again in front of the TV.

I reached around her to open the door for her and she turned and smiled at me, reaching out her hand like she was going to touch my face. But she thought better of it, and let her fingertips graze down the side of my arm instead. "It was nice seeing you again WhoeverYouAre. Why don't you call me sometime when your girlfriend isn't ill? Then we can talk like normal people, hmm?"

I smiled at her in gratitude. "Thank you," I told her. "It was kind of you to come out here in the middle of the night." I glanced at her belly. "You obviously need your sleep now."

She snorted and rolled her eyes, but she still looked at me thoughtfully like maybe she'd never met me before. "I don't sleep anymore anyway."

When I got back upstairs, Olivia was stirring and thrashing around a bit on the bed. Thirty minutes later she rolled over onto her back. Her eyes fluttered and then opened, blank as cardboard when she looked at me.

Her brow scrunched. "Peter?" she asked, looking around the room. She started to get up, reaching instinctively in the direction of her weapon. I grabbed her arm and threaded her fingers in mine to stop her motion.

"It's okay," I soothed her. "You're home. Do you remember anything?"

Her eyes flickered around the room uncertainly, but she nodded at me.

"Peter?" she asked, her face going an unhealthy shade of puce.

"Yeah?"

"I think I'm going to be sick," she said. And then she leaned over the edge of the bed and vomited so violently and so long she made Regan Macneil look like a hypochondriac.

_It must be love_, I thought dizzily as I held her hair for her while she rode out the dry heaves that followed the vomit, because at that moment, there wasn't anywhere else I'd rather have been than seeing her awake and upright, coughing and gagging her way through her three-day-old stomach contents.

* * *

><p>I slept on and off for two more days after I threw up on Peter's shoes, but it wasn't unconscious sleep anymore; it was more the sleep of the guilty and unwell.<p>

The nausea didn't stop. Or the vomiting. That went on for days, until there were thin coils of blood in the vomit, and I felt like I'd hit the pavement fast and hard after a multi-story fall. After I ruined his bedroom floor, Peter brought me a bucket, but fortunately I only had to throw up in that once. Every other time I managed to make it to the bathroom.

Walter and Peter fed me Gatorade, broth, and three days after I woke up, toast, until just the sight of those things activated my gag reflex.

As I quit vomiting, slowly recovered, and established a more normal sleeping routine, Walter declared that my sleep, the pain, the nausea were all side-effects of the pyrotechnics I'd been performing with my mind. Peter didn't look so convinced, but he didn't protest or offer any alternatives.

Evidently, those pyrotechnic abilities seemed to be here to stay and I didn't have the energy or the nerve to decide if this were a good or a bad thing. The morning after I woke up, I was laying in bed trying to muster the strength to get up and the resolve to put my meeting with Elizabeth behind me for the time being, when Walter walked into the room with a pile of Peter's clean clothes from the laundry. He burst into the room as he usually did, loudly and without knocking and it scared the piss out of me. I wasn't able to control it; it was as involuntary as breathing or drawing my weapon. I jumped; my spine tightened and my chest burned. A milisecond later, the pile of clothes Walter was carrying burst into noisy flame. Walter pulled his arms back and let the pile of fiery cloth fall to the floor. While I stared wide-eyed with horror he jerked his head from the fire back to me with surprise.

Then, Walter smiled at me. A toothy, half-delirious smile of pure lunatic joy, as if all of his life's dreams had suddenly materialized in front of him.

We stared at each other, me with dread and him with glee, until the smoldering varnish on the hardwood floors melted, releasing its pungent and no doubt toxic fumes into the air before Walter called for Peter, still looking more like someone had given him a trunkful of his favorite foods than that he'd just been nearly crisped by my Hephaestian gaze.

The smell of the flames and the sound of Walter's unadulterated glee brought Peter up the stairs in triple-time. He skidded into the room at the end of a dead run, only nearly missing the circle of fire now licking up almost to Walter's waist. Peter either had world-class reflexes or he'd dealt with Walter and an unexpected fire before (instinct told me it was the latter). Without missing a beat in his skid, Peter yanked off the quilt crumpled at the bed and smothered the flames, stamping it out with his feet and shoving Walter aside as blaze turned to smoke and billowed up from around the edges of the blanket.

When the fire was out and we could get Walter to stop fidgeting with excitement, I explained to them that I believed Miriam had done something to me to release my buried pyrotechnic abilities. Walter added merrily that he believed my fear for their safety also contributed to me accessing my abilities.

Apart from being tired, and now potentially deadly because I was likely to make anything in my vicinity burst into flame, nothing else had changed. Unfortunately, I remembered everything from the ordeal that preceded the fire. You'd think, the trauma my body went through, I'd at least be gifted with a little amnesia, but it wasn't to be.

I was surly, in pain, and absolutely wrecked about what I'd learned from Elizabeth Bishop. The dreams were back too. I shuddered and sobbed my way through nights when I was so tired I couldn't stop myself from sleeping but couldn't quite wake up either. Peter held and petted me while I vainly tried to shake off the dreams that hadn't haunted me much since before Christmas. They weren't any less dark or horrible, although now both of Peter's mothers and all his children co-starred in them along with me.

Peter's warm breath in my ear and soothing touches only made me feel worse, until I flung myself away from him and started spending the bulk of my nights downstairs.

I wanted to tell him, really I did. But I could never quite bring myself to begin. I at least wanted to begin to figure the mess out myself before I could tell Peter, who likely as not, would try to catch the next plane to New York if he thought he could do something to save both worlds.

Elizabeth Bishop was insistent that the only way to reunite the broken worlds was for Peter to get into the machine. I didn't trust her any more than . . . well, I couldn't think of anything untrustworthy enough to compare her to. I knew there were a lot of unanswered questions, not least of which was why Cassandra sought us out in the first place. Elizabeth had tried to glance over that in our conversation, but I didn't miss that she seemed unaware of exactly _what_ Cassandra had told us. Add to that, Cassandra claimed she'd broken her programming, but it was still unclear whether Elizabeth helped her break The Secretary's programming or if it was Elizabeth's programming Cassandra had broken. It wasn't out of the realm of possibility that she and Elizabeth had few ways of communicating over the years that Cassandra had been here guiding the children. Also, why would the Observers go out of their way to ensure that Peter had some kind of unknown abilities, only to turn around and sacrifice him. Little of what she'd told me made sense. Plus, she herself had nearly killed Peter the last time her people got their hands on him. Why on earth was she be so hell-bent on sacrificing Peter? I needed some more information myself before I told Peter.

Denial isn't just a river in Egypt and I commanded it with more authority than any Egyptian Queen ever did.

Peter sensed that something was wrong—it would have been hard for him not to. The confused hurt that rolled off of him whenever he was near (which was always) made me avoid him all the harder, which, I might add, was difficult, since he refused to let me out of his sight.

A week after I was able to tolerate solid foods, I finally convinced Peter that nothing horrible was going to happen to me if he went for a run, so he did. I needed to get the ball rolling with Walter on figuring out the mess Elizabeth Bishop had left in her wake. I was getting worried that Peter was going to figure something out before I had a chance to process everything and then tell him myself. Those fucking Bishop men. Their minds buzzed around so quickly, the two of them could get bored faster than paparazzi could sniff out a cheating Senator.

And, like under-exercised puppies, when they got bored, they got into trouble. I wanted to make sure Peter only got into the kind of trouble I wanted him in, and only when I was fit enough to bail him out.

Before he left, I asked him to send Walter up to his room so we could play cards.

Walter was a goddamned card shark. In the event that he ever grew disillusioned with his career as a mad scientist, he could have made a killing in Vegas in a few months and retired to a warm island. Not that he'd ever need the money, but he might do it for the challenge. If he went to Vegas, Walter had his flighty, old-man routine down pat so thoroughly he would be long gone before anyone figured out that he was scalping them.

Walter shuffled into the room wearing his cardigan and his wool socks. He smiled at me tentatively and sat on the edge of the bed, reaching out with his hand to show me the deck of cards he'd removed from his pocket.

But I didn't want to play cards.

Walter looked down and his smile fell.

"What is it Olivia?" Walter knew. I don't know how he knew, but he knew that Miriam didn't just pop out of thin air, wandering in the street, which is the story she'd told Broyles, and then the Child Protective Services when they'd consulted before her parents were called. I wasn't sure what she knew or didn't know. It was hard to tell with Miriam. She wasn't big on conversation in the first place, and, crazy or not, powerful or not, she was still a little girl and probably lacked the cognitive ability to understand just what had happened to her. Aside from the feeling that she was drawn to me, I wasn't sure if she knew, understood, or even remembered her life for the last 10 weeks or so. I sighed. We'd have to use Miriam again sometime in the future I suspected, but I wasn't looking forward to it. I couldn't deal with that now though.

Walter also knew that what was making me as jumpy as a teenager when the condom broke was definitely something I didn't want Peter to know. I've never been able to tell what parts of Walter's insanity was put on and what parts were genuine, but whether it was some preternatural intuitiveness or just his overwhelming need to bind his broken little family together, he almost always sensed when something was wrong, even if he didn't know the details.

"Elizabeth Bishop came to see me, right before the fire," was how I started because it seemed best to tear the bandage clean-off right away.

_The fire_ was what we called it. As if it were its own thing birthed whole from some unconnected timeline, like Athena from Zeus' head. Not at all something I was responsible for.

Walter flinched like someone had struck him, and I caught a glimpse of pain in his eyes, which for once, were clear and lucid, before he looked down at his lined hands which shook and looked painfully older. "The other Elizabeth Bishop," I amended.

Walter just nodded. Of course he knew that.

"She was responsible for Peter's abduction. She engineered Peter's DNA in a lab using recombinant DNA from the Observers, who she claims are The First People, responsible for creating the machines and splitting one world into the two realities we now know. She made the shapeshifters. She also claims she made the children and farmed them out to adoptive families on this side in the hopes that one of them could run the machine, an experiment that failed by the way which is why she took Peter in the first place.

Walter stood up and went over to stand at the window with his back to me. He clasped his hands behind his back by holding one wrist in another hand, his shoulders slumping under what I knew to be his self-castigation and guilt.

"I'm not sure how much of this I believe or not. I don't trust her. She hurt Peter on purpose. She abducted those children and did horrible things to them. They'll never be the same." Walter glanced at me and raised his eyebrows, indicating the children weren't the only things who would never be the same again. I shook my head and dropped my eyes. "We can check the adoptions of course. And the DNA. Walter, I need you to run some tests."

"I . . ." I paused. I wasn't sure how to go about this. "We have to confirm or deny what she's told us as best we can. I have some samples from the FBI. From the children. Hair, I think. . ."

Walter turned and looked at me, his shoulders still slumped, his hands still clasped behind his back. I swallowed hard and took a deep breath. "Will that be enough? For a DNA test?"

"Yes," he said slowly. "For a paternity test, I'll need a full comparison sample."

"You have one," was all I could manage.

Walter didn't say anything. He just shuffled over to the middle of the room, retrieved the cards from the bed, and walked to the door.

Walter paused in the doorway but didn't turn around. "It will take a few days," he said and his voice sounded tinny and remote like he was stealing himself for some as-yet-unknown violation.

"I know," I told him.

I silently watched him run his fingers along the circle of the doorknob before he grabbed it and slid quietly down the stairs.

* * *

><p>Something was definitely up with Olivia. She was avoiding me. It was as simple as that.<p>

It wasn't the sex. That, if possible, was even more enthusiastic and acrobatic than before. From just about the moment she could sit upright again and go twenty minutes without vomiting she'd resumed yanking me to her with a hand on my cock, crushing her mouth to mine a second later, and within minutes she was panting in my arms, clutching her to me with such desperate abandon I began to wonder if maybe, since we were all going to die anyway, she was storing up pleasures for the afterlife.

But, except for the sex, she was clearly avoiding me, which is pretty much her MO when things get fucked-up six ways til Sunday.

But forcing Olivia to say or do things until she's ready is counterproductive. Ask me how I know.

So I kept my mouth shut and pretended not to notice as best I could. Tried vainly not to let it bother me that she suddenly seemed to be always looking elsewhere when I tried to catch her eye and she refused to touch me, except when I was inside her of course.

But her distance made me anxious, which in turn made me uneasy and insecure, reluctant to let her out of my sight, petrified that if I let her go even for a minute, she'd slip away from me forever like a newborn spider on an unfelt breeze.

Three weeks later I had my answer.

One slow afternoon when Olivia and Walter were out—those two whispered more secrets together than a pair of pre-adolescent girls these days—and Astrid was pulling time at the field office, I was alone in the now only slightly-charred, FBI-refurbished lab. I was shoving Walter's work papers into a semi-tidy pile at the end of the table when a notebook I'd never seen before slid out from under a pile of loose, homeless notes and Pop-Tart wrappers.

Evidently there was a whole series of tests and investigations being conducted I wasn't aware of. I tried to read Walter's notes, but he'd used some kind of code, probably so they wouldn't catch my attention, since hard experience had taught me not to delve too deeply into Walter's mind for any reason. And it would have worked. I would have tossed it aside without another thought if the PCR films hadn't slid out from the back of the notebook. A whole handful of them falling to the floor and skimming across the lab in every direction.

When you live my life, reading PCR films is about a second-nature as breathing. Not to read them is like trying to not read a stop-sign. You just can't do it. When I went to retrieve the one that had fallen the furthest, I recognized my own fucked-up, still unexplained series of nucleotides. When I stacked Miriam's and Melek's on top of mine, however, still half-wondering why these were still out in Walter's papers and not filed in the boxes of the back room which thankfully escaped the fire, I couldn't un-see the match.

I stumbled against a nearby table, then just stood there, trying to decide if I could make it to a sink before I lost my lunch.

I slowly gathered the results from the four children, each a match, each film layering another horror on top of the one before it in my over-taxed mind.

It took me twenty minutes to crack Walter's note-code. It helped that I knew his mental habits as well as I knew his personal ones.

I read the notes. As usual, Walter was anything if not thorough. I read about Olivia's clandestine meeting with my mother (who somehow learned to cross over to make social calls), about my previously unknown offspring, spawned by her in an attempt to engineer children of mine capable of running the machine, about the vagaries of my own recombinatory conception and aberrant genetic makeup, about my mother's claims that I needed to power the machine because it was the only way to heal the rift and reunite the two worlds.

As I skimmed Walter's wild speculations, I comprehended he and Olivia's implicit betrayal in keeping all this from me. I managed not to lose my lunch because I embraced the rock of anger gathering hard and dense in the back of my throat. The anger bullied the hurt out of the way and bloomed with the symmetry of a bird-of-prey stretching its wings.

I left it all spread out on the table, along with my notes for cracking Walter's code, just so there wouldn't be any confusion as to why I'd left.

And I fled, running I knew not where, at that point only intent on moving.


	11. Chapter 11

Sum over Histories

by MVariorum

**Summary**: Olivia comes back. Olivia and Peter save the world. Again.  
>Categories: Romance; Adventure; Smut<br>**Pairings**: Peter/Olivia  
><strong>Rating<strong>: M: So kiddies, the faint of heart, and those with refined taste should scoot along elsewhere. You have been warned.  
>Story Notes: Please accept my preemptive apologies for the pseudo-pseudoscience. Not a scientist. Sadly, I'm not even a pseudoscientist. Never will be.<br>**Disclaimer**: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.  
>Chapters: ?<br>**Completed**: No  
><strong>Spoilers<strong>: AU after early season 3 (more or less around _Do Shapeshifters Dream of Electric Sheep?). _Includes some elements of the early part of Season 3, but no spoilers beyond that.

**A/N:** My apologies for the delay. As I expected, RL prevented me from updating on Tuesday. Sorry to leave you hanging just as Peter had fled. That was never my intention.

As always, thank you to my wonderful beta starg8fans. Read on!

**Chapter 11 / ?**

I headed to the bus station, trying to put geographical space between me and this fucking town and all the people in it. I planned to run for a while and, though I knew I didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of succeeding, I also tried my best to erect mental walls to block Olivia from picking at my mind from a distance.

But once I got to the station, though I wanted to leave, I just didn't. There were too many things here that belonged to me now, too much that I'd made my own to just up and leave, though you'd think by this point in my fucked-up life I'd have known better.

I wouldn't be the first person to observe that I just never learned.

I wanted to go. Let Walter and Olivia worry about Destiny, the machine, and the end of both goddamned worlds. It was what they did best. I'd never been much more than a hanger-on anyway, the incredulous audience of their supernatural freak show.

Shit. I didn't even believe myself anymore. That was a big fucking problem. I'd spent the bulk of my adult life hustling, not just everyone else, but myself as well. If I wasn't prepared to believe my own grift anymore, I honestly wasn't sure where that left me.

The Not-Leaving only made me angrier, so I took the Blue Line up to Revere, to a dimly-lit bar I dimly-remembered, where no one would know me, and more importantly, no one would give a damn.

I remembered the place as a working-class bar, the kind of place where single people who worked on their feet or with their hands went after their shift, alone or with friends, and expected no one to bother them. Either my tastes had radically changed, or the bar had, because it was a moderately intense meat-market, the women perfumed and overly-coiffed, the men loud and well-muscled.

When did I get so old? I hated them. Hated their happiness and their relief at not spending another night alone. Hated that they seemed to be able to push their regular misery aside for a while to enjoy a drink with friends.

I sat there and slowly drank myself silly, watched the other patrons ruin their livers and search for someone to warm their beds that night. I had to growl at two women far too young, far too carefree, far too alluringly-dressed before word got around that the surly drunk in the corner wasn't interested in any company. Next to Olivia's unadorned beauty, any woman wearing anything other than lip gloss looked garish and overblown to me now, and that pissed me off too. I wished I could just drink myself stupid, take one of these pretty little things home and fuck her blind, drown in a soft body and a girlish voice, everything the opposite of Olivia, before I caught the next plane out of this hemisphere before dawn broke—somewhere the Atlantic Ocean didn't touch, where I could forget about Walter, where Olivia would never find me, not that I really expected her to look.

I ran on anger for the first couple of hours, letting it blot out all the other things I was trying not to think about. After the anger thoroughly mixed with the alcohol though, I couldn't stop my mind from wandering the way of the maudlin. I wondered what Olivia was doing. She and Walter most certainly would have made it back to the lab. It was almost 8 and she hadn't called me, a sure sign she knew what had happened and more or less where I was, in spite of my attempts to block her. She must have at least known I was safe; if she felt I wasn't, you could bet she'd be here determined to drag my ass to safety.

It was disgraceful. I couldn't even go on an angry bender without knowing that Olivia could track me with her fucking mind so easily I may as well had a GPS implanted in my spinal cord. That chafed almost as much as the lies, as her treating me like I was a minor character in my own life, as her not needing me, when I so desperately needed her.

When the shots rounded up into the double-digits, it was inevitable; I couldn't stop thinking about paternity because, sadly, it was the _least_ painful thing I could consider about the newest set of revelations.

A father. Just when I thought the mess that was my life couldn't get any weirder, I turned out to be someone's father. Correction: I was four people's father. Four people I didn't know, who didn't know me, and probably didn't care to. Well, three now, since one of them was dead. Shouldn't I feel something other than vague regret that an unknown child had died? Some kind of recognition or belonging? All I felt was the whiskey, burning my throat and a near-suffocating loneliness.

These kids all had other fathers—real ones, who kissed boo-boos, took them to sporting events, and clapped at school plays, activities which, I might add, I'd only read about in books since I myself had never known such a father.

I tossed back the last half of my double and traced the patterns in the scratched tabletop with my thumbnail before resting my head in my hands. Jesus, could things _get_ any more complicated?

I can sincerely say I'd never imagined such a possibility. I'd given very little thought to having children of my own. Not only had I at no period in my life been in a position to raise one, I'd never really felt the need to see little carbon-copies of myself running about. I didn't dislike children exactly—Ella's infectious giggle when I'd played with her, for instance, was pleasant enough. Children were fine when they belonged to someone else. I just never wanted them to be mine. I wasn't father material. With little interest and no healthy examples to imitate, it was kind of a foregone conclusion. I certainly hadn't wanted them in my twenties when I wandered the world, scraping along one side of the law or the other, and Christ knows I didn't want them now when, even if one of the worlds did survive, there was a better than average chance I wouldn't live to see thirty-five.

Was I now supposed to do something? It felt like I should, though I couldn't think of what. Show up and introduce myself? (when I sobered up, of course). Set up a college fund? Teach them something?

I knew very little that was appropriate to teach a child. I knew how to hustle, how to fight, how to shoot, and how to piss people off. I also knew how to use my mouth on Olivia to make her forget her own name, but like all my other achievements it wasn't something I'd share with a seven year-old. Everything else I knew descended from those skills, the sum total of my accomplishments. Nothing there prepared me for fatherhood.

I'd read the kids files. Read them and re-read them for months. Though they themselves were far from it, these kids lived with normal people—again, something I'd only encountered in fiction. At one time, these people had been just a childless couple on a list, with no interest in abnormal chains of nucleotides, no knowledge of embryos conceived in Petri dishes, no concept of unnatural human abilities and machines that destroyed worlds.

And why did Olivia feel like she had to lie about such a thing anyway, I wondered with the random logic of the thoroughly drunk. I'd always known that Olivia was as controlling as a Bond villain, minus the personal idiosyncrasies, but the things she'd kept from me in the past had never concerned me quite so directly. It had always been _her_ trying to come to an understanding about the brand-newest violation, so I'd been willing to overlook it. But meeting with my sociopathic mother, learning about how I was responsible for healing or ending both worlds without telling me took her apple-polishing habit to a whole new level.

I knew Walter had been trying to protect me. Forgiving Walter his repetitive failing—loving me—was as natural to me as breathing. She might even claim she was trying to protect me as well . . .

No. That wasn't right either. She'd never say something as direct as that. I might even forgive her if she said my name, looked me in the eye, and told me that she'd kept these things to herself because she was trying to protect me.

Maybe.

I knew she cared about me, though she made it clear it was against her will and her own better judgment. I also knew she'd suck a round out of her own weapon before she'd admit it to me or anyone else. No. With Olivia's evasiveness and her skill in making me feel stupid, she'd insinuate that I was the jackass for daring to be angry when she tried to control my own future, like it was hers to control.

That wasn't the real problem though. It would have been easier if it were just that she'd kept something important from me and made decisions for me without my consent. Both of those things chafed and irritated me, but with Olivia, they were par for the course. I could hardly complain about them now—not when I'd always known that those things were as much a part of Olivia as that lush, distracting mouth of hers.

The real hurt was the fact that, no matter what I did or said, Olivia just couldn't ever bring herself to imagine that I might be her partner in anything other than her bedroom.

It was all well and good to delude myself when she writhed and moaned against me. Or even afterwards when she let me wrap my arms around her as she twitched in her restless sleep. But it hurt more than I cared to admit that when it really counted, never in a million years would it have occurred to Olivia to consider me her confidant, someone who could share her burden and maybe even learn to understand it with her.

She was already my friend, my confidant, my lover. I already knew just being those things to me about taxed the extent of Olivia's generosity. Was it so much to ask that she want to be my partner too? Surely a woman with multiple-lives, one with super-powers and a hundred faces could squeeze another role in, if for no other reason than she knew I needed it.

If she'd remained distant—insisted on resuming the non-nutritive sexual relationship from last year—then at least I could have understood a little better. But she hadn't. Since before Christmas, she'd moved in with Walter and I, slept next to me every night and didn't seem to give a damn who knew it. She'd _acted_ like something had changed between us, so I believed it had. I'd even dared hope that she might be learning to do more than simply tolerate me. The fact that I'd assumed these things on my own without any confirmation from her whatsoever didn't make me feel any less like an idiot. And I could pretend otherwise all I wanted. I'd believed it, so the hurt was exponentially worse than what it would have otherwise been if she'd just ignored me entirely like before.

Like a man stranded in the desert next to cool, running water who learns that the water is contaminated by some unseen, deadly organism, I was ten time thirstier after I'd glimpsed the end of thirst than if I'd never seen the water in the first place.

The bar had thinned out and I realized I didn't know how long I'd been sitting there staring at my hands, empty glass in front of me, having been cut off some unknown time ago with a smile by the wide-mouthed waitress and a stern look from the bartender.

I wiped the back of my mouth with my hand. Jesus, I was a mess. Sitting here alone, feeling sorry for myself, staring into my empty whiskey glass like some abject character in a country song.

It's never reassuring to realize that you've become a cliché.

For a moment I could see myself in the bar as that perky waitress did. It wasn't such a wonder, when I imagined my empty-eyes, rumpled hair, and drink-slackened face, that Olivia didn't fall into my arms and promise to be my helpmeet for life. And now that I was the missing son of not one, but two sociopaths, not to mention the undiscovered father to a cache of fucked-up, lab-rat, unnaturally gifted children designed to power a world-ending device whose reason and purpose was yet unknown, it was hardly surprising that she wanted to distance herself from me.

It wasn't a pleasant thought but there it was. So I took refuge in anger. The clean, uncomplicated lines of anger made it so I could get up from the closing bar and head toward the beach. I sat on the cold sand in the dark, letting the sound of the rolling waves muffle everything sharp and agonizing, watching the tide slink away from the continent until sunup. When the bloody fingers of dawn pierced the horizon and made the tips of the waves sparkle I got tired of feeling like a frost-bitten Penelope, so I pushed my creaking limbs upright and headed to the station, boarding the over-bright train back into the city, my ass leaving a sandy wet mark on the seat.

I watched the commuters pour back into the city that morning and wondered if their lives were as gut-wrenchingly complicated as mine. Then, I boarded the Red Line to Cambridge. When I got home, the house was locked and silent and I couldn't tell whether Walter and Olivia hadn't come home at all last night, or if they had just already gone off to work.

I'd planned to calmly explain to Olivia that I couldn't take her OnAgain—OffAgain approach to me. That I needed her far more than she _didn't_ need me, and, if she'd allow it, we could take a stab at happiness together, at least for what little time I might have left. I figured that if she decided to hate me for the rest of my life for needing her, then her misery was likely to be brief.

But when she walked into the house in the late afternoon with a challenging lift to her chin and a cool, accusatory light in her eyes, I was suddenly so angry and hurt all over again, I knew I was just the person to wipe that haughty look off her face.

The hum of my anger swelled to a roar by the time I launched myself at her.

* * *

><p>The last 24 hours hadn't been among the best of my life, largely because Astrid was at Quantico for a training session and I had to manage Walter's anguish when Peter took off.<p>

When Peter didn't come back last night, I'd known he was okay and possibly hadn't even gone very far, though he felt distant and fuzzy enough I wondered if he was deliberately trying to block me. It didn't stop me from tossing and turning all night though, reaching out to the empty space on his side of the bed about six hundred times, each time grieving anew his absence and familiar warmth.

When had I grown so accustomed to him that I couldn't sleep unless he was beside me?

The minute he came home, I knew it. I'd had to work hard to persuade Walter to keep his appointment with the scientists at Massive Dynamic. He was supposed to be gone for three days and he'd really not wanted to leave. I had to promise that to the best of my knowledge Peter was fine, that I expected he'd be back soon, and that I would call him as soon as I knew Peter was okay. It took all my powers of persuasion, but I finally got him loaded onto the private plane sent to fetch him. I confess to ulterior motives. I wanted to talk to Peter myself before Walter was around to muddle the situation.

I walked in the door and jammed my keys in my pocket. I had slid my coat off before I saw him. Peter only stood a half a room across from me, but he may as well have been a world away. He was watching me, stiff and upright as a school master, leaning slightly back, his left hand pinching the handle of his coffee mug. He had showered, I could tell from the damp, curled edges of his hair, but a shower couldn't hide the his red-rimmed, bleary eyes which showed that he'd drank a great deal and not slept.

His eyes had the half-lidded, slumberous look of a tiger eyeing a particularly juicy piece of flesh: knowing and hopeful at once. I knew that look. It was the same one his face took on when he was watching me, when he was steeling himself for whatever I might say or do next, when he wanted me.

Shit.

I took a step closer.

When I stepped out of the shadows of the entryway I was afforded a better view of his face. I could see that his shoulders were taught and his jaw set. Peter was _angry_.

"I read Walter's notes," he said almost conversationally, taking a few steps in my direction, setting his cup on the hall table. "Were you even going to tell me?" he asked, still slowly moving forward. "Or were you just going to let me read about it in your report along with everyone else at the FBI?"

I've seen Peter irritated plenty of times. Fed up and cranky and just plain beside himself with annoyance. At Walter, at me, at how closely our lives resembled a Brazilian novella. But I'm not sure I've ever seen him really angry before, let alone with me.

The predatory look still darkened his face as he backed me up a half step toward the door.

"And where have you been?" he asked, his eyes cold where they flicked across my face, not that I needed any bigger hints with the waves of anger radiating off of him so strongly it was making it difficult for me to focus.

I had been looking for him, of course. Checking all his usual haunts; the ones I knew about, and even those I wasn't supposed to know about. Cruising the places I knew he fled to when he wanted to be alone, ostensibly to get away from Walter. In the last twenty-four hours I'd had to fight back the immobilizing terror that he'd left for good, in spite of all of my reassurance to Walter to the contrary, and it made me anxious, my voice taking on a coolness I didn't really feel to cover up the rush of relief that overcame me when I'd confirmed that he'd come back home safely.

"Out." I replied, settling for the one word, figuring the rest went without saying. Given his mood, I reasoned, the less I said, the less trouble I could get myself into.

"Uh-huh." He agreed, but I could tell he wasn't listening, his mind already turned to other things. He stepped in close enough to me to invade my body space, more than enough to make me uncomfortable, and hunched his shoulders around me in a parody of his I'm-listening-to-you stance, the one he didn't realize he took when he was intently focused on a speaker. His face was level with mine, his bent body creating the felt-sense I was trapped by him on three sides. I took a final half-step backwards and felt the door press against my back.

Now I really _was_ trapped and I guessed that was his intent. His eyes hadn't warmed, but they raked over my body, up and down, up and down, blatantly lingering on my hips and neck. He licked his lips, and maybe it was actually an accident. Lust rippled across the connection, dispersed into the anger, and then transformed into its own thing, one ugly ball of want and fury that bounced back and forth between us.

Oh, shit.

He hurled himself at me, and it might have hurt when he slammed me against the door with his body if I hadn't already been expecting it in the fuzzy, dream-like way of déjà vu, as if this had played out thousands of times before, just like this.

His mouth scorched like fire when it crashed onto mine.

I'd put my hands up to break the weight of his body when he crushed mine against the door and it was only a second before my fingers curled into his biceps. He growled and batted my hands away, then he yanked them behind me and trapped them with his left hand, compressing my shoulders against the door under the weight of both our bodies.

This was better, I thought as his panting breaths made his chest dig uncomfortably against my breasts. Better anger than hurt. As he drug his right hand up along my left side I felt the bottom two buttons pop off of my shirt when he wouldn't let up contact with my body enough to keep from straining the buttons where the material gathered and runched up. Up over my shoulder his hand went, wrapping my ponytail around his hand, then his wrist and pulling hard so my chin went up, giving him better access to my neck where he scraped his teeth, biting hard enough to leave a mark.

I exhaled, my breath leaving my body with a hiss, and he froze for a moment at the sound, letting up on my hands, backing a little of his weight off me, and moving his lips away from my neck. I slumped with disappointment and couldn't quite muffle the whimper that escaped from my mouth.

So much better.

I opened my eyes and angled my head as best I could with it trapped against the door to look at him. I shifted against him, curling my fingers into his wrist where it bound my hands behind me, arching my neck against him. His eyes were lust-darkened cobalt when they met mine; they flared briefly with indecision and the next second he pushed back from me with a hand on my shoulder. He re-gripped my wrist, yanked me away from the door and drug me into the living room where he shoved me on the couch, covering me with his body even before I hit the cushions, jabbing his erection into my thigh.

I struggled for a minute on the couch, sticking to it uncomfortably with my clothes and his weight on top of me. Wiggling against the cushions and under him until my hips were even with his, I managed to cradle his pelvis in mine. I lifted my ass, parted my legs, and wrapped them around his waist, clasping him to me with my thighs and grinding his cock against my clit though the bulky layers of our clothes.

He gasped and shoved his hips against mine as he undid the last three buttons on my shirt and flung it aside. Then he snatched my hands from where they were resting on his shoulders and stretched them high above my head, pinning them there against the armrest with his left hand.

His right hand jammed under me and fumbled, unsnapping my bra a few seconds later and shoving it up so my breasts spilled free from it.

This time I didn't try to suppress the moan as his mouth came down on my breasts.

He tightened his hold on my hands, stretching them up further from my head in response until my shoulders burned with pins and needles. I squeezed his hips tighter with my thighs and ground into him harder in encouragement while his mouth tightened on my nipples, teeth scraping them so if my hands hadn't been distended above me I would have arched off the couch entirely, even with his extra body weight on top of me.

He leaned up, resting his weight on the hand holding my arms, the fingers of his free hand snarling in the side button of my suit pants. After he loosened the button and yanked at the zipper, I lowered my legs from around him so he could scrape my pants and underwear down my legs to the end of his reach just a little below my knees. I kicked them the rest of the way off while he fumbled with the button and zipper of his own pants. I strained against my pinned hands when I saw him struggle, wanting to help and speed up the process and then panted again with pleasure when he finally got them down enough that his cock sprang free and he slid it along the outside of me which I could tell was obscenely wet. He grinned roughly when he felt it before he dropped his head back to my breasts and a second later, my clavicle where he returned to gnawing at my skin. I locked my legs around him again, crossing my ankles so he couldn't change his mind, then shimmied and writhed my hips against his trying to position the tip of his cock correctly. He jerked a warning tug on my hands and I almost cried out with frustration.

He hitched against me, sliding the length of his cock along me so it was drenched, but refused to enter. I writhed against him, frustration, pleasure and shame all rolled together as I tried unsuccessfully to maneuver him into me. Over and over he slid against me so that when he finally sank into me it was such a surprise and such a relief I screamed and twitched under him like someone had gutted me.

He slid his right hand under the small of my back, still pinning my arms above me with his left, and tilted my hips with a hand under my ass so he could slide all the way into me. Now that he had both his hands occupied restraining me, he had no way to keep from smashing me under his body weight and I had to breathe in tiny pants to get any oxygen at all. I was shaking uncontrollably underneath him as he caught the right rhythm and proceeded to thrust into me with the regularity of a well-oiled piston.

It felt so good, his body lunging against and into mine that I never wanted it to end. I was still a ways away when I heard his breath hitch against my ear and his movements took on the jagged urgency that I knew meant he was about to come. He snarled into my ear and bit me low of my neck where it meets my shoulder and came, growling and shuddering into me so roughly he shoved our upper bodies off the side of the couch, his orgasm causing him to let loose on my hands so they flopped over my head to the floor without his grip to hold them up.

He clutched me to him with the arm still wrapped around my back and continued with his mouth on my shoulder, intermittently nibbling, sucking and biting. I kept surging against him even though he had slowed, trying to maintain the friction. He was still hard, still buried in me, and since he'd stopped, I shifted so his pubic bone ground against my clit. With his mouth on my neck it only took a few strategic shoves against his pelvis and I finally came, my orgasm making me clench around him, so he whuffed in my ear and shivered against me.

When our breathing returned to normal, he shoved himself off of me, pulled up his pants, and sat on the end of the couch looking straight ahead.

The combination of shock and lassitude made it difficult for me to either move or form intelligent thought. In the past, our secret relationship meant we'd been quite creative in choice of setting; even so, the living room was new. Mostly, Peter had just come to my apartment in the late night and we'd stayed there. But it's not like we've ever worked nine to five, so a certain amount of ingenuity was required in the past for us to slake our needs in any kind of timely manner. Just about every flat surface in the lab had, at one time or another, held our combined weight while we scrabbled against one another. We'd used the back of the station wagon and the SUV more than once. On one memorable late-night, when my apartment had just been too far away to fit in our time-frame and Walter was already home, he'd backed me into the dark shadows of the retaining wall outside of his house and slid into me, scraping my tailbone against the stones repeatedly so I had the scab and then the scar to remind me of him for weeks.

God, what was wrong with me? The less we communicated, the worse things got between us, the more I craved him, the better the sex was.

And this encounter was no exception.

I couldn't get a read on Peter at all. He sat slumped at the end of the couch, staring straight ahead, not touching me at all, not a good sign. Peter loves to touch me. Even before we started sleeping together, he took every possible opportunity —and even some that were impossible—to touch me. A soothing hand on my back, his fingers on my hand, his thumb tucking a stray hair behind my ear, as if in a world where language could no longer do its job, it was the most faithful way for him to communicate with me.

"You confuse the hell out of me," Peter finally said, his voice flat and defeated.

Well, that was fair. I confused myself most of the time too.

"What do you want from me anyway?" he asked, frustration making him so stiff I could almost hear him hum.

I didn't answer because I was terrified I'd say something so wrong I could never undo it.

Peter scowled, still looking deliberately away from me, distancing himself as much as possible. He grabbed his knees with his hands and said, "Can you even consider I might be something more than recreation? Something other than a diversion from the gruesome events of the rest of your life?"

I looked away from him because I couldn't think of anything to say, and even if I could, I wouldn't be able to squeeze any sounds out around the tennis-ball sized lump lodged in the back of my throat.

There was a time when I believed I could have cut Peter out of my life and willed myself to never look back. Believed I could have just treated the wound like all the others, patched it and soldiered on. And I think that's true, but I don't think I fully understood just how much it would cost me if I did. Now the very real possibility that he might finally have had enough of me made me realize that even though I might cut him out, the wound would remain and bleed me sluggishly forever.

When I still didn't say anything, he reached down to fumble with his belt-buckle. When it was fastened, he shoved himself off the couch and turned his back on me. He took a few steps away from the couch and stood in the archway between the living room and hallway. He kept his back to me, but leaned his shoulder against the archway as if it was too difficult to stand on his own.

"Make up your mind Olivia. We do this together or we don't. Whatever you decide, though, you have to go all in."

He slid his arm along the wall next to his shoulder and then let it skim down the wall's wood trim. "If we do this together, you've got to— . . . You can't lie to me. Or keep things from me. Ever again."

He pushed himself away from the wall with his palm. "If we don't, well . . ." he shrugged, and he straightened his slumped shoulders, " . . . your bag is in the back of my closet. Try not to be here when I get back."

I heard the door lock click as he pulled it shut behind him. He'd closed the door quietly after he'd passed through it, but it still sounded as loud and final to me as gunfire.

* * *

><p>After I left I went looking for Walter, in search of someone—anyone—to talk to me halfway honestly about the whole mess. I quickly learned that he'd gone to New York to Massive Dynamic that afternoon, so I'd spent as much time away as possible—wanting to ensure that Olivia had enough time to get her things out before I got back, refusing to let myself consider that she might not need to.<p>

By the time I got back, the house was dark and silent. I could tell by the stillness of the air in the entryway she was gone.

_Well, what did you expect, genius?_ I asked myself. Challenging Olivia head-on emotionally was never a constructive way to go about things with her. When I'd stacked an ultimatum on top of the challenge, I may as well have packed her bags and called her a cab myself.

I sighed and tossed my keys on the hall table, sliding my coat off and tossing it in the direction of the coat hooks, not caring when I missed.

Maybe it was for the best, I tried to convince myself as I headed to the kitchen and grabbed a beer out of the refrigerator. I snapped the cap off with the opener and leaned my hip against the counter as I took a long pull on the bottle.

To say I'd bungled the situation was an understatement of epic proportions, and if I could take it back right now, I would. I've always placed a premium on self-control. In the circles I used to move in, keeping some measure of control was usually the difference between being alive and being slumped in a pool of your own blood. And yeah, I didn't need a psych degree to understand that growing up with Walter and my grief-and-guilt-stricken mother made me value self-control as a key element for survival. And, of course, since I'm almost always in control, I behave about a hundred times worse when I do lose it—although in the past I usually managed to confine the damage to myself, and not others. But I swear, Olivia's untouchable, lone wolf routine makes me lose it swifter and surer than a girl-fight draws crowds of onlookers. It didn't say much about my character that was complimentary, but there it was.

But asshole or not, the sentiment behind my words and actions had been real. I'd planned to try and actually _talk_ to her; pretend to be an adult for a change and explain to her how I felt. But that moment was long gone now. The truth of the matter hadn't changed though. I couldn't fight the bad guys anymore and fight her too. If she couldn't trust me enough to recognize that I was as involved in this as she was, that she didn't have to be alone, that she _wasn't_ alone; if she couldn't understand that I needed to be her equal partner in every respect, and not just physically, then we didn't stand a chance. I no longer had the energy to keep carrying more than my fair share of what there was between us—too much of my attention was required elsewhere now.

That wise little lecture that would have gone down a lot easier if I hadn't been alone, already missing her tide and wildfire smell and the way the air shimmered a little when she was in the house.

I turned and faced the counter, shuffling a few steps back so I was bent at the waist, and rested my elbows on the counter. I hadn't turned on any lights since the darkness felt less harsh and accusatory, so I peered out at the moon and streetlamps angling in from outside while I sipped my beer, trying to keep my mind from thinking about anything at all.

When I felt her arms snake around my waist from behind me it felt so right it didn't even startle me, although somehow she'd managed to come down the stairs and enter the kitchen without making a sound.

"You're still here," I said, and then felt stupid since the last thing either one of us needed was a narrator.

"Uh-huh."

"All the cabs tied up this afternoon?" I couldn't stop myself from sniping. Sometimes I really hate the fourteen year-old boy that lives inside my head and exercises partial control of my mouth.

"Uh-uh," she said and squeezed my hips with her elbows and leaned a little harder against me to emphasize her words.

When the silence stretched long between us I finally asked, "What is it you're afraid of?" because I really wanted to know. "It can't be me, for sure," I told her, since even now, when I was angry with her and hurt, I still couldn't think of a single thing I wouldn't do for her, much as I hated to admit it.

She made a sound that implied I'd said something particularly dimwitted. She lifted her hands from my waist and leaned against me, running her fingers down my forearms on the countertop until her hands were on top of my own. "What else is there to be afraid of?" she said as she fitted her fingers in the spaces between mine and curled them so the tips were hidden under my palms.

The pain her words caused underneath my ribs felt like someone had knifed me, but oddly enough that didn't stop me from grinding out, "Am I really so bad as all that?" I knew that being the key figure in the war my home-world waged against this one didn't make me much of a catch, and that the number of things left unsaid between us could fill a football stadium to capacity, but surely she at least knew that I'd never hurt her.

"No," she said quickly—too quickly for me to believe her.

At least, never on purpose, I amended to myself.

When she didn't say anything else I asked, "So, then, what's the problem?"

I didn't think she'd reply, but then she shifted against my back and said, "I can't need you like that. I just can't."

I bit my lip to stifle the words that sprang to my lips. Then, I decided not to. I'd demanded that she go all in, I could hardly shy away from it myself now. "But you do need me." I told her.

Olivia never ceases to amaze me. To my surprise, she didn't shove away from me and stalk off. Instead, she just rested her cheek against my spine and said, "I know."

"So . . .," I prodded.

"I thought I was trying," she mumbled against my right shoulder blade.

I just shook my head at her. She hadn't left earlier, so maybe Olivia needed a little tough love.

"Try harder," I told her as I pushed myself up off the counter and turned, stepping away from her, but not before I grabbed her wrist to lead her up the stairs to bed.

The climb up the stairs seemed interminable. Inside my room, I was too tired even to undress.

I flopped down onto the bed, sloughed off my shoes, and then laid down on my side with my back to her. She slid in next to me and wrapped her arm around my ribcage, shifting against me uncomfortably when I didn't acknowledge her touch.

I sighed and threaded the fingers of my bottom hand through hers, angling my shoulder back a little so I fit more comfortably into the curve of her body.

"Partners, Olivia, remember?" I'd wanted it to sound firm, but, like every other occasion when I talk to Olivia, it came out more like a plea.

"I remember," she said.

"Don't forget anymore," I told her.

A moment later, when she didn't say anything I added, "I can't do this alone. You may not think you need me, but I need you."

"Okay," she said. And I knew she meant it when she squeezed my hand in hers and folded her legs so they conformed to the shape of mine.

"All in," she said into the back of my neck, so quietly I barely heard it in that last moment before I pitched off the edge of the cliff of consciousness into sleep.


	12. Chapter 12

**Sum over Histories**

by MVariorum

**Summary**: Olivia comes back. Olivia and Peter save the world. Again.

**Rating**: M. So kiddies, the faint of heart, and those with refined taste should scoot along elsewhere. You have been warned.

**Disclaimer**: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.

**Spoilers**: AU after early season 3 (more or less around _Do Shapeshifters Dream of Electric Sheep?). _Includes some elements of the early part of Season 3, but no spoilers beyond that.

**A/N: **Well, with the exception of the next chapter (which is half done) I am officially posting up to the point I am writing, which means I can't make any promises about when the next chapter will be ready. So for those (few) of you out there still reading/caring, I'll post when I can while I try to give myself a little breathing room between the writing and the posting. –MV

Special thanks to my beta starg8fans.

**Chapter 12**

"Are you coming?" Peter said over the top of his shoulder as he started to climb the stairs. It was long-dark, way past bedtime, but I'd been putting it off, pretending to work at the table since I was too scared to find out what would happen when it was time to sleep.

I could fight monsters that would have made even the most hardened criminals soil themselves, and face the destruction of multiple worlds, not to mention my own psyche unflinchingly, but the idea of being honest with Peter terrified me more than all of those things together.

Uncertainty held me still and silenced my tongue. Walter was still gone, and I'd dutifully called to report that Peter was home and safe. Peter and I hadn't spoken at all about the events of the last forty-eight hours. The day had been a busy one, and we hadn't spent much time in each other's company. I'd been stuck in meetings most of the day and he'd been still sorting through the mess the fire had left at the lab. When quitting time came I'd stood outside of the Federal Building for a full twenty minutes, deeply conflicted about what to do. Should I go back to their house? Or, should I just make everyone more comfortable and go back to my apartment, no matter how little I wanted to cross the threshold of that place ever again.

Whoever said God was in the details was right. There was no grand moment when I realized that Peter had become vital to me. No heavenly trumpets, no angelic choir. Even though he was only gone a day, his recent absence made me realize of how much I missed him when he was away. His loss turned out to be neither local or compartmentalized from the rest of me as I'd always imagined it would feel. Instead, it spread out everywhere and canopied everything, like the endless bend of the sky. All my world integumented by the moment-to-moment specifics of Peter. How he overuses his hands when he talks. How his voice rounds out with indulgence when he promises Walter a treat. How he ties his shoes—two bunny-ear-loops twisted together. How he is so left-handed he can't answer a phone or open a door with his right hand. How he scowls and crosses his arms in the background of my life, wordlessly pegging me for a fool.

I don't know what love is, really. Am sure I wouldn't have recognized it, even had it come knocking at my door and announced itself. I knew that I was unhappy when I wasn't with him and that I valued his opinion to the extent that no decision felt final until I'd listen to him bitch about my lack of common sense. I knew that inside his head, on the rare occasions I allowed myself unmitigated access, was the only place I'd ever felt safe, or at least safeguarded. Most importantly, I knew that he understood me in ways that I wasn't sure anyone else ever would, or even could. Understood that other responsibilities would always have to come first, that any other needs would be subject to the hazards of fate and happenstance. Understood, even, that I would never be able to tell him a single one of these things. Lucky for me, with a few notable exceptions, Peter seemed mostly content with me showing him.

When I didn't answer for several long minutes he stopped a few stairs from the middle landing and turned to look at me.

I turned so I was sideways in the chair and bent my body so he could see my face around the corner of the ceiling, lifting my chin but not quite able to bring myself to look him in the eye. When he backed down a couple of stairs so he could see me, I looked away swallowing hard. "Do you want me to?"

He looked confused when he stepped back down the stairs and walked until he was right in front of me. I steeled myself, forcing my eyes to raise to his, so at least he would know I wouldn't come with him without an explicit invitation.

He smiled at me, shaking his head slightly, looking indulgent and a little bemused. "You are the most confusing woman, you know that?" He leaned down towards me as he said it, bending at the waist and resting one hand on the table and the other on the back of my chair.

I stretched up so my face was closer to his, reaching to wrap my arms around his neck, my fingers playing with the hair that over-grows there when he needed a haircut as he did right now, waiting for him. He still had the strange look on his face when he dipped his head down toward me, almost imperceptivity.

It was just the invitation I needed. I tugged his face closer to mine, arching up to meet him with my mouth as I pulled so his lips met mine. His mouth was warm but tentative, not as encouraging as I would have liked. I stood up, dragging his face with me as I went, so I could press my body into his. He stumbled backwards a step or two, making a little surprised noise when I leaned my full weight on him.

A little belatedly he looped his arms around my waist while I stood on my toes and pressed open-mouthed kisses to his neck and the join of his shoulders peeping through the nearly threadbare collar of his favorite t-shirt. I squeezed him closer to me and closed my eyes to breathe in his book and ethanol smell.

He just stood there with his arms looped awkwardly around my waist, arching his neck unconsciously into my lips but he didn't do anything else. His hands were still, fingers resting lightly on my lower back.

As we stood there I kept pushing myself harder and harder against him, irritated at our vertical position, irked by his docile response.

"Uh, . . ." he paused while my lips traced the curve of his jawline, "Do you want to go upstairs?"

I nodded mutely and nipped at his skin of his Adam's apple with the edge of my teeth.

He exhaled sharply and pulled away from me a little, backing up towards the stairs, then turning his back on me to head up them. Even though I know he didn't mean it any such way, somehow, it felt like rejection.

I practically ran up the stairs behind him, reluctant for him to get too far away from me, wondering what the hell was wrong with me tonight that I was so needy and apprehensive?

He barely made it to the top of the stairs and I grabbed his elbow and spun him around, wanting to touch him again, ignoring his perplexed smile. I felt better when he opened his arms for me and I stepped between them and he scooted-backed us down the hall, bumping his bedroom door open with his hip as his mouth headed for my neck and his hands grabbed my ass and yanked me against him, already hard and ready, straining against his jeans.

Inside the room neither of us bothered to close the door, for once unconcerned about privacy since Walter wasn't home.

I fumbled with my shirt-buttons while Peter reached behind and under it to unclasp my bra. I finished before him and reached for his belt. I was working on the button and zipper on his jeans when I realized that my own trousers had been loosened and were drooping around my hips. Together we finished discarding our clothes and the next minute he was pulling me down half-on him as he fell back onto the bed with one hand on my wrist and the other on my hip.

We fell with more force than grace. When we stopped bouncing enough that I could grab him without unmanning him, I reached down and wrapped my hand around him, swiping my thumb across his head as I stroked him. I shuffled back off of him a little, running my tongue across his chest and down his abdomen, following the light trail of hair below his belly button.

He rested his hand on my shoulder and moved it absently up and down my back as my upper body bent over him

When my mouth followed the route of my hand he groaned and grabbed a pillow, propping it up under his head so he could see, using one of his hands to swipe my hair back off from where it had swung down to cover my face. I smiled at him from behind the few strands of hair that had escaped his fingers and angled my face toward him, knowing how much he liked to watch, before dropping my mouth to meet the rhythm of my hand.

His eyes burned into me like he was trying to memorize the image. A while later, when he was hissing and jerking under my hands and mouth, he squeezed my shoulder and said, "Olivia, if you don't want this to be over now, you'd better get up here."

I dropped all the way down again and stayed there a few seconds, just on principle, enjoying how he twitched at the back of my throat.

He gripped my shoulder harder and lifted his hips off the bed. "Olivia, I'm serious," he gasped.

I shook my hair out of my way over to my right side and trailed my mouth back up his torso until I was on my side next to him and my mouth met his again. He took a deep breath around my lips, threading his fingers through my hair which was splayed out across his chest, before reaching up to my shoulder and pushing a little so I flopped onto my back next to him.

He propped himself up next to me with his weight on his elbow and trailed his fingertips along my jaw, down my neck, tracing absent patterns along my collarbone, down to my breasts where his hands spent a disproportionate amount of time, kissing me until his mouth pulled away to follow the path of his fingers, murmuring incomprehensible endearments against my skin so quietly they couldn't have been intended for my ears.

He slid his hand lower, keeping his mouth on my breasts, pulling one nipple and then the other between his tongue and his teeth and I arched off the bed and my legs dropped open so he could slide his finger into me, taking care to drag the pad of his finger across my clit on the way down.

I made an indistinguishable noise, and grabbed his shoulders, still bent over my chest. He turned his head to face me so I could see his smirk when he felt how wet I was. He was always annoyingly proud at my body's reaction to him.

I scrabbled at his shoulders, pulling at him so he'd figure out it was time to move. He used two fingers now on me and I panted in his ear.

He misunderstood me, and rolled over onto his back, trying to drag me on top of him.

I shook my head, though he couldn't see me. I wanted him on top. I wiggled and tugged at his hips and shoulders until I was half-underneath him so he'd know what I wanted.

He made a questioning noise as he rose up above me, and I couldn't stop myself from reaching up with my fingers to smooth the wrinkles between his eyebrows as he settled himself between my legs. He snickered softly when his erection got stuck on my hip as he slid over me. Then he pulled back and straightened his arms, looking down between us to watch as he sank into me.

Head bent, he pulled his hips back, careful and slow, and then returned, watching his body disappear into mine little by little as I angled my hips up to meet him.

I've never been all that interested in watching; I usually prefer to close my eyes and revel in the less-dominant senses: touch, taste, smell. But now, for the life of me I couldn't stop looking at him. When he tipped his head back up I stretched out my arms so I could hold his face in my hands, keeping him in place above me so I could see him.

My hands disappeared into the now impossibly bright glimmer that I always tried not to see because it reminded me unhappily that he didn't belong here and never would; yet here he was anyway and the realization made me cling to him all the more when he dropped back down into me. Tenderness flooded me, as overwhelming as it was foreign and unexpected, and I trembled uncontrollably, captured and held hostage by something urgent and grand.

He caught and held my gaze, his eyes an endless hall of mirrors that showed me to myself from every angle. I felt the margins of myself thin and shimmer like time-faded cave paintings when the limestone emerges from underneath millennia of pigment.

"Olivia?" He asked, and I saw my own face reflected in his pupils. He was smiling faintly, looking bemused and perhaps a tad self-conscious under my direct stare.

I slipped my hands to his neck, wanting to pull him to me so we could be closer, but wanting even more for him to stay right there, so I could see him just as he was, unwanted glimmer and all.

"You're so bright," I said. The thought slipped out of my mouth unfiltered, and I instantly regretted saying anything at all. He looked at me so oddly, I would have done just about anything to get the half-mystified look back on his face, uncomfortable though it made me, because it was so much better than the abashed look that clouded it now. I'm not exactly one for sharing at any time, even less so in bed, but I could really do without him looking so completely flabbergasted.

I looked away, resolving to keep my thoughts to myself from now on. I shifted under him so on his next downstroke he pushed even further into me. I felt his groan vibrate under his ribs and rumble up through his throat and I slipped one of my hands away from his neck to his chest so I could feel the vibrations overtop his heartbeat that assured me that he was real and he was here even if only for this one unrecoverable moment. I slid my hand from his neck down to his lower back, pressing him into me a bit more.

"What is it, Olivia?" The words sounded like they were hard for him, difficult to utter because something heavy weighted his tongue.

I pushed him down into me a little harder, enjoying how his torso twitched in response and then risked a glance at his face which was so filled with warmth, adoration even, I just shook my head mutely at him and dropped my eyes because I couldn't bear to look at him anymore. He ground his pelvis against mine in response, breathing a bit faster when I tilted my hips up against him.

He rolled over, carrying me with him so we were face-to-face on our sides and I was disappointed at the change since I missed the feel of him stretched out on top of me. My disappointment was soon appeased when he hitched my leg up over his hip, brushed my hair away from my face and threaded his fingers in it on the back of my neck. He captured my mouth with his again as he slid back into me.

"More comfortable this way," he murmured between kisses. He cupped my hip with his hand, guiding me to meet his slow strokes, "so we can go slow."

In all the ways and times and places we'd been together, I was pretty sure that slow had never been in the program. I was also pretty sure that was because I'd never have agreed to it before, but I couldn't seem to remember why I'd felt that way now.

This position made it so he skimmed across my clit every time he pulled back and returned to me, but he moved so slowly, the pressure never amounted to much of anything and soon I was shoving against him.

"Ah-ah," he scolded me softly, and he dropped his hand from my neck and face to the side of my hip, stilling them so I was completely dependent on him for the sensation.

I twitched with frustration and glared at him. He smiled at me so indulgently I smiled back at him before I registered what I was doing.

"Always in such a hurry," he teased as he pushed into me and then stayed there shivering a little when he was all the way in. "How come? You got a date later or something?"

"Isn't this a date?" I asked, lacing my words with far more innocence than I had any business claiming as I squeezed my muscles around him to get his attention.

It worked. He slid his hands back up to my face and growled, "Best date ever." Then he pulled his hips back and shoved them back into me so fully I gasped out loud a second before he pulled my face back to his and covered my mouth with his again.

He clasped me to him, sliding an arm under my bottom shoulder and up to push me toward him with a hand on the back of my neck and wrapping the other around my ribcage to rest his hand on my tailbone and I did the same, only backwards and with opposite hands, like Ginger Rogers.

It took us a few minutes to find the right motions. We had to work together to do it right, and when we finally got it, it felt like such an accomplishment I marveled that we somehow managed it. Face to face, chest to chest and hip to hip I trembled against him, made breathless by the almost unbearable sweetness between us.

He lifted his eyes to mine and the amber streaks in them that made them change color with his mood and the lighting incandesced with the glimmer, so the rest glowed such an impossible turquoise against all that yellow light it looked like the hue had been computer-generated. I couldn't stop myself from moving my fingers from the back of his neck to the depression underneath his eye so I could see how my skin looked against the dizzying rainbow of color.

He smiled at me briefly, and a few moments later his eyes widened and blazed hot, their depths seeming to catch fire. He dug his face into my neck and panted, his hips picking up the pace and he came, gathering me closer to him with arms around my upper body and I wrapped the leg resting on his hip tighter around him. He rested his head on my shoulder, whispering unintelligible words into my hair behind my ear.

I tightened my arms around him as best I could with an arm trapped under his body weight, feeling him shudder against me, bobbing along on waves of tenderness I'd have sworn two days ago I wasn't capable of feeling. I palmed his face with my hand and he turned his mouth, brushing his lips along my palm, moving to grip my wrist and hold my hand against him.

"Umm, sorry about that," he whispered into my hand a while later as he brushed nibbling kisses there, up my wrist to the top of my arm until his face was buried back in my neck where his still-panting breaths made whooshing sounds against my skin.

"That's okay," I told him when I pulled back a second later so I could see him. I ran my index finger across his lips, "You can make it up to me."

He grinned wickedly when I kept my finger on his lips. He snaked his tongue out to circle and then flick my fingertip before he suctioned my whole finger into the heat of his mouth, sandpaper tongue swirling along the bottom of my finger.

At first he looked disappointed that his actions hadn't produced the response from me he knew he could elicit without half-trying. Then he looked at me so strangely, for a minute I thought something might be wrong. He exhaled softly and cupped my face with both of his hands and said, "You know, if you keep looking at me like that I'm never going to let you leave this bed again."

I laughed lightly, suddenly awkward and uncertain as a schoolgirl on her first date. Looking away from him, I asked, "That wouldn't be so bad, would it?"

He leaned into me and kissed me, his mouth moving so softly against mine that without realizing it I shifted closer to him, trying to deepen the contact.

He pulled back, and looked at me again, not quite hiding his pleased surprise at my words.

He shook his head, his hands still along my face, a faint smile still pulling at his lips. "No," he said serious as a heart attack, "that wouldn't be bad at all."

And that was all he said before he moved to make it up to me with his hands and his mouth.

####

"Olivia, you must concentrate."

Every muscle in my body tensed at the accusatory lilt in Walter's voice.

"Goddamnit, Walter, don't you think I am?" I snapped. I could just _feel_ Peter's twitching concern coming from behind the door of the room next to us and it made me shiver, the hairs of my arms and neck lifting uncomfortably.

It had been over three weeks since I set Peter's laundry on fire in Walter's arms and regrettably for everyone involved, in the meantime I'd repeated that involuntary action in more ways and places than I'd ever care to catalogue. Luckily, Peter exhibited a disturbing knack for stifling whatever flames I ignited whenever I was startled, frightened, or angry for even a minute. Of course, I lived the vast majority of my life in at least one of those states, but even so, I remained unable to replicate the ability in the lab for Walter no matter how many crazy-assed tricks he pulled to try to stimulate an emotional response from me.

Walter looked me full in the face, his eyes sharper, more knowing and coherent than I'd ever seen them before. "I think you are afraid," he said mercilessly and I had a totally unexpected, unasked-for flashback to my seven year-old self, frightened and uncertain, desperate for approval or kindness of any sort.

"Fuck this," I said, low and angry, as I pushed back from the table I was seated at across from Walter. "And fuck you too!" I added for good measure.

We'd been sitting there for most of the afternoon, staring at a Barbie doll Walter had procured from God-knows-where, him waiting for me to set the damned thing on fire, his hands folded serenely on his notebook.

I was trying to keep my anger and frustration in check, but I could tell Walter was manipulating me although I couldn't fathom the reason, but he was doing it openly, on purpose, and it was more than pissing me off.

"Isn't that what you want?" I asked nastily. "For me to be afraid."

"I want you to concentrate your abilities and control them, however you might be able to," Walter replied evasively. "How do you think you might do that?"

"C'mon Walter. Let's call it a day," Peter said, carefully neutral. He was leaning half-in the doorway so he could protect himself from both of our lines of sight.

Suddenly it was too much: my anger and impotence, Walter's prodding and probing, his clinical assurances that I could teach myself to do this, Peter's anxiety and concern filtering in from the other room most of the afternoon. It built to such incalculable proportions my chest quivered, and suddenly the ridiculous doll caught fire and burned almost daintily, it's bleached, synthetic hair curling under the heated twist of the delicate flame.

I just stared dumbfounded, but not so distracted I missed Walter's satisfied smirk as he turned away to scribble in his notebook.

The three of us stood there frozen where we were, Peter and I watching the damned thing burn, Walter half-turned sideways. A few minutes later, Walter almost visibly shook himself from his own thoughts and leaned over to douse the now-charred and melted plastic with a cup of flame retardant.

"C'mon," Peter said to me, jerking his head in the direction of the door. "Let's get out of here."

Walter's head snapped up from where he was staring off into space. He looked for a minute like he might object to Peter's ending the day, but one glance at the set expression on Peter's face and he started gathering his things and poking at the now smoldering doll in the middle of the table with the chewed end of his pen.

Peter held out his hand toward me, waiting patiently for me to grab it. When I slid my fingers into his after a second he tugged, pulling me towards the door. "Get your coat," he said quietly, gently shoving me toward the pile of our outerwear on a chair in the corner of the lab by the door. "I'll help Walter so we can go home."

I was suddenly so tired I wasn't sure my legs could carry me. The anger and frustration had burned out of me, I realized as I slid into my coat and stood waiting for them by the door. Then I thought better of it and sank down onto the top stair that led down into the lab and rested my forehead on my bent knees.

I nearly dozed off sitting right there, too exhausted to decipher the muted, insistent buzz of Peter and Walter's conversation from the back room as they straightened things, Peter's voice stern and low, Walter's high and pleading.

The next thing I remember was Peter's hands on my shoulders, and I jerked awake and swiveled so I could see him squatting behind me, fingers kneading the taut muscles he found there under the flaps of my open coat which had partially slid off my shoulders.

"Ready?" he asked softly.

I barely managed to nod and he gave me his forearm to help to lever myself up with. We rose together and the three of us trudged out to the waiting car.

I leaned my head on the passenger-side window and closed my eyes for the silent ride home. I barely remember arriving, just fuzzily perceiving how Peter muscled me out of the car, into the house, and up into bed.

_How many times is he going to do this?_ I wondered groggily as he peeled my work clothes off me while I flopped bonelessly on the bed for what felt like about the four-hundreth time in the last few months.

"Sorry," I mumbled after he'd dispensed with his own clothes and slid in next to me. I wondered what it was about Peter nowadays that made me feel like apologizing to him fifty times a day.

"What for?" he asked as he curled his body around mine.

I rolled over and wrapped my arms around him, resting my cheek on the tilted edge of his shoulder, my mouth against his bare chest where I could feel his heartbeat thump under his skin. "Don't know—," I muttered, "—feel like I should do something besides pass out on you every night and leave you to do all the heavy lifting."

"Don't worry about it. You're not heavy," he said, gathering me closer with his arms, pressing his face to the top of my head. "And Walter's working you hard."

It was the last thing I remember that day.

* * *

><p>A week after Olivia set Walter's Holiday Barbie and her green velvet dress on fire (who do you think dug the tattered box out of Walter's bizarre storage?), Olivia's alarm went off at its normal 6.30 AM time. I waited for her to fumble for it and switch the irritating noise off. As soon as she did, I rolled over and trapped her arms with mine, grabbed the phone and chucked it under the bed. I ignored the glare she twisted her head around to shoot me. She was so adorably soft and pink and rumpled from sleep it was easy to ignore the glare, but hard for me to keep my hands off her after it faded.<p>

Olivia would break all my fingers if I ever even insinuated out loud there was anything about her that could qualify as "adorable."

"Peter, getting rid of the phone doesn't make it all go away." She was still twisted around glaring at me, but her eyes flickered when I reached up under the shirt she was wearing to cover a breast with my hand.

"Jesus, Olivia, take a day off, would you?" I placed little nibbling kisses down the side of her neck.

"Remember what happened the last time I took a day off?" she asked, still a little more hotly than the situation warranted.

"That was different," I whined when I realized that, for whatever reason, seduction wasn't going to effect a shut-down of Olivia's indefatigable, goal-oriented brain this morning. It was nothing short of miraculous I was able to switch off that ingrained purposefulness of hers as often as I could and get her bodily needs to run the show. I sighed, let her go, rolled away onto my back, and shielded my eyes against the unwelcome morning light with an arm. I resolved someday soon to hold her down and make her tell me the secret Olivia-Rules, one of which surely explained why sometimes a certain thing worked to lure her into sex and other times the exact same thing didn't.

Except for the Make-Peter-Look-Stupid-at-Every-Possible-Opportunity rule. I already knew that one.

"Today is Saturday," I grumbled from under my arm, "it doesn't count if it's a day that _normal_ people take off."

"Yeah, well, normal people don't climb into each other's skulls to try and figure out how to save both worlds."

This was Walter's newest hobbyhorse. Somehow, Walter had gotten it into his erratic brainpan that what we really needed to do was explore the connection Olivia and I had because he believed that somehow, together, we could discover a way around this epic "choice" my so-called mother and Cassandra insisted I must make. As usual though Walter found the details irrelevant. And once he climbs on his hobbyhorse Walter just rides and rides and rides, making the rest of us wish someone would gut his horse.

Because Olivia and I don't trip all over each other in our brains enough as it fucking is. What we really needed was to do it deliberately.

With psychotropics.

And an audience.

Walter hadn't said anything about how to achieve this out loud yet, but I could see the elation churning in the backs of his eyes every time Olivia and I were in the same room together. I knew how his mind worked. And I hadn't asked him to elaborate because I was so desperate to preserve the good mood that had recently charmed Olivia since I'd insisted on a commitment from her almost a week ago now, that I'd have sold my grandmother (were she living) to keep us skimming along the blissful path we'd been traipsing for the last few days.

Olivia had so far delivered on that whisper I'd extracted from her in the dark. I'm not sure if it was my absence, my desperate pleading, or just that she'd finally worked through whatever objections she'd had for herself, but whatever it was, I knew she'd resolved to never let us get that far apart again. I suspected that, in her own mind, Olivia framed her implicit promise to me the same way she fulfilled every other commitment in her life, meaning not without regret but entirely earnestly. Self-delusion has been my longtime bedfellow, but I knew I wasn't imagining the somewhat dazed warmth I'd seen on her face that following night. Sunk deep in post-coital stupor at the time, I'd been too preoccupied for it to really register, but I'd caught similar glances from her when she thought I wasn't looking more than once in the interim, so I knew there was a difference the same way I intuited a lot of things about Olivia, which is to say not at all, and yet still quite perfectly.

While I could have lived without being in the same category as her all-encompassing responsibility to all the other people on the planet(s), it was a real privilege to bask in the glow of the contentment that had burned through Olivia's distance fast and clean as the sun disperses a morning fog. It helps, of course, that I'm a total fucking pushover pretty much every time she turns those velveteen eyes of hers on me. And when they're filled with bemused fondness like they have been the last few days, you may as well stick a fork in me since at that point since I'm pretty much done.

Olivia was far too complex a woman to be suddenly Susie Sunshine simply because our personal relationship was somewhat resolved, but for Olivia to exhibit anything other than abject fear and worry was a step in the right direction. Frankly, given the contours of our particular history, had she shown any overt enthusiasm for me or the concept of us together there was a very real danger I'd pull a gun on her.

Olivia rolled over, propped herself up on an elbow, and quietly observed me while I had a conversation with myself, silently refusing to give any energy to my typical morning whine. I was never very pleasant in the morning and while waking up next to Olivia improved my mood somewhat, any pleasure I got from her closeness and warmth was ripped away the same instant she spiked out of bed and headed for a shower and fresh clothes with a speed and determination that would have made Cole Trickle wonder what the hurry was.

She wasn't doing that today for some reason though, and I lifted my arm from where it was partially covering my eyes and looked at her openly. "If you keep cracking the whip like this, you're going to run me off," I told her, but the twitching corners of her mouth indicated that she wasn't listening to my bitching. It wasn't true of course—I wasn't going anywhere ever again—and Olivia knew it. Unless someone applied force of some kind, I wouldn't ever leave and I hoped Olivia never had occasion to make me. Even with the endless opportunities of another world opened up to me, I belonged here with Walter, Olivia, Astrid and even Broyles, bizarre as that may sound. Olivia had been right—even if she had scarcely understood it herself at the time. That idea wasn't as unappealing as I thought it would have been, had someone suggested it to me a couple of years ago. And it wasn't just the prospect of regular sex either, although when my partner was Olivia that was nothing to sneeze at. But I could never go back to the life I used to have, even if I'd wanted to. Not now. As unwelcome and as colossally fucked up as it was sometimes, this was home now.

"Promise me we'll take a vacation _after_ we save the worlds," I begged.

That earned me an actual smile. "Yes, I promise. If after we save the worlds we are both alive and mobile, we'll take a vacation." She rested her hand on my chest, palm over my heart, fingers pointed towards my chin.

I'm not sure if it's aural, clinical, kinesthetic, or emotional, and it's not like she'd ever tell me if I asked, but Olivia likes to find my heartbeat. After nearly two years of on and off raunchy sex we'd been in enough positions like the one we were currently in for me to notice how often her hand, ear or lips strayed, probably unconsciously, to the center of my chest, so I reasoned that something about it must calm or please her in some indefinable way.

What can I say? In my life, being observant often draws the line between life and death. And that goes double for anything having to do with Olivia.

"Somewhere warm," I specified, rejoining our conversation, suddenly captivated by the thought of Olivia's bikini-clad body stretched out on a sun-warmed beach somewhere, "I forgot how fucking long and cold the winter is in Massachusetts."

Maybe I'd buy an island somewhere—I had no idea what they went for these days—but surely Massive Dynamic's pockets were deep enough to get me a strip of deserted real estate in the middle of the South Pacific somewhere.

"Don't be such a baby," she said as she moved to rest her ear where her hand had been on my chest. "It's not that bad."

"Why do you think I was living in Iraq?" I asked her. "I hate the cold."

Her shoulders twitched a little with amusement. "You weren't _living_ there," she said carelessly, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. Trust Olivia to focus on the least important aspect of any given statement.

"Mmm. How so?"

"Well," she said, "here you're at least theoretically on the right side of the law."

I smirked. "Sweetheart, if you think being on the right side of the law is any kind of incentive, you don't know me very well."

Her upper body stiffened at the pseudo-endearment which was never anything other than a taunt and a goad between us. I only used it to intentionally piss her off and she knew it. One instant she was resting serenely on my chest, and the next instant one of her hands slid her across my skin and under the waistband of my boxers, cupping my balls in her palm and running her fingers lightly over my already half-hard cock.

"I know what works as incentive for you," she observed casually as she stroked me and massaged my balls. In about two mortifying seconds my body proved the truth of her words.

"How come you can do that to me, but I can't do that to you?" I asked huffily, swallowing a groan as her fingers worked along my cock the way she knew I liked best.

She half-shrugged as she lowered her mouth to the skin of my belly. "I dunno," she mused as she her tongue swiped low on my abdomen making the muscles there shudder in reply. "Guess I'm just better at it than you."

I laughed out loud at her arrogant claim and then swallowed hard as she pulled my cock into her mouth. "No argument with that," I choked.

After that there were no more multi-syllabic words.

####

A couple of hours later we were in the lab, preparing for another day of pressing forward through the margins of the impossible. Astrid, lucky bitch, was off since she made it clear months ago _she_ didn't work on weekends.

Things were about as normal as they got between us, meaning that one of us was arguing with Walter, while the other acted as referee. Today I was doing to yelling while Olivia imitated Switzerland.

"No fucking way, Walter," I told him, instantly feeling my shoulder muscles tighten like new-tuned piano strings.

"Peter," Walter whined, and I wondered if my voice was as grating when I used that tone on Olivia, "I think that both of you going in the Tank is the best way. I think that the only thing we haven't investigated is the connection the two of you have."

"That's bullshit, Walter," I huffed. "The only thing we haven't investigated thoroughly is me climbing into that machine and that's because _neither of you_ will even talk about it, let alone consider it, even though you know it's the only way!"

The fire-breathing look Olivia shot me when I included her in my accusing glare said that she was done mediating between Walter and I.

She circled around so she was standing next to Walter, resting her hands on her hips, just in case I was confused about whose side she was now on.

She turned her head and looked at Walter. "Why do you think we both should go into the Tank Walter?"

I stepped forward and leaned into Walter, shouldering Olivia out of the argument with my body. "Olivia isn't going back in that Tank and I'm sure as hell not."

Olivia was never happy when I excluded her, even less so when I talked about her like she wasn't even there. But I'd rather argue with Walter. Walter's memory was shorter and his anger didn't interfere with me getting laid.

Olivia's jaw twitched and her assessing look turned impossibly cold. Godamnit. She'd probably just read my mind. She was getting more proficient and better at hiding it, especially when I was distracted with something else, like being terrified and pissed off. Now that I was almost certainly not getting laid tonight, I had nothing to lose.

I turned to face her and gave her my most condescending smirk, leaning down close to her to emphasize our size difference and said, "Be sure you really want to know before you go poking around in there."

Her eyes widened with surprise which confirmed she really _had_ been clandestinely digging.

"I'm going out," I told them, disgusted with them both. I grabbed my coat.

I left, pulling my hat on as I went. Jamming my hands in my pockets, I crossed the quiet, mostly empty campus, passed through the brick-and-wrought-iron gates that hemmed Harvard in like a battery cage and headed toward the river.

The truth was, I was scared shitless to go into that thing. Olivia had done it countless times now, but it was no secret that Olivia was outlandishly brave, so there was no shame in being less courageous than her.

Olivia gave me thirty minutes before she came to find me sitting by the river. She came up behind me, leaning down next to me, resting her elbows on the back of the bench.

"I'm sorry," she said. "That was rude."

"Doesn't matter," I said, determined to wallow in my own petulance.

"How long are you planning on staying mad?" she asked, staring out at the barely moving water.

That's Olivia, down to the bone. Like my frustration and anger were scheduled, and I could tell her when I might be completing those experiences. "Not sure," I told her.

She shoved her hands into the opposite sleeves of her coat to warm them and shifted a little on the back of the bench, looking down at her exposed wrists. "Well, if it helps any, I feel bad enough you probably will get laid tonight."

That got my attention, and I swiveled my head so I could look up at hers. She looked at me too; her face was serious, but her eyes were amused. I couldn't help myself, I laughed.

"I'd tell you, you know" I said shortly a moment later, unwilling to completely surrender my irritation, "if you just asked."

She pushed herself off the back of the bench and circled around so she was standing in front of me. Hands shoved deep in the pockets of her coat she studied me openly.

She balanced on one leg and kneed me in the thigh. "So, tell me."

I hunched my shoulders up closer to my ears against a cold wind blowing off the water and looked out at the ice floes meandering along the lethargic river. "What are we waiting for?" I asked. "We all know what needs to happen. I don't know why we're screwing around with all these other things."

I had long ago decided that I would indeed get into The Machine when the time came and I'd already started planning what remained of my life around that fact.

Olivia just stared over my head, back toward campus, bending her legs and straightening them in short motions to keep warm since she was standing still.

"This is a waste of time," I added when she didn't say anything.

She glanced down at me when I said that, looking, of all things, a little disappointed. She took a breath like she was going to speak, but then she glanced at my face and something stopped her words. She blew the breath out slowly through her teeth.

She nudged me again, this time with her thigh as she turned and sat down next to me. She kept her hands in her pockets, but scooted over so she was touching me with the left side of her body. She tipped her head up and squinted at the grey-white winter light. "Maybe Walter needs to waste a little time," she finally said.

There wasn't any reply that didn't make me seem like a bigger asshole than I already was. This is why it's not worth the trouble to argue with Olivia. No matter how legitimate my ire, Olivia always finds some ways to make me look like a selfish bastard.

Or, maybe it's that I really am a selfish bastard, and Olivia is the only person with stones enough to point it out to me regularly.

We didn't say anything for a while. We just sat there on the bench, freezing our asses off, not talking. "Do you think we'll ever get through a day where one of us doesn't have to apologize to the other," I wondered aloud.

She blew out an amused breath that made a white cloud shoot up out of her mouth into the air. "I just went," she said. "Now it's your turn."

I leaned over and put my head on her shoulder. "He'll need help," I told her. "When I can't anymore."

I felt her stiffen underneath my cheek but her tone was light, "Don't you think it's a little early for you to be handing out the rue, Ophelia?"

"I'm serious." This wasn't the first time I'd tried to talk to her about what would happen when I got into the machine. There were so many things I wanted to tell her, but every time I tried she wouldn't listen.

"So am I," she gritted. Now her voice was tight, irritated.

I wish I could say I'd decided to go into The Machine for Olivia, like the flawed hero in a book I once read, a man with my name, who sacrifices himself for love and a chance at a just world. But in spite of the less-than-subtle Christian imagery that hangs over the events of my life, effective as a flimsy umbrella battling a shitstorm, I wasn't terribly keen to sacrifice myself for love, no matter how sincerely felt. Walter had been reminding me for as long as I could remember that I'd squandered all the gifts his imagination graced me with in a variety of semi- and illegal activities. I already knew there wasn't any justice in this world. No reward for the righteous; no punishment for the wicked. But there might be atonement, some unseen universal scale that blindly balances acts of compassion against acts of iniquity. The twists and turns of my life had left me with enough regrets to fill an ocean liner, and while most of the decks were related to Olivia, a large enough chunk of what remained belonged to the rest of the world that I wanted to try and weight the scale on the side of good in whatever feeble way I was able to.

"Olivia, please, . . . " I started. I'm not really sure how it happened. If I think about it too hard, I'm sure she defied the laws of physics, which I realize we do about twenty-two weeks a year, but even though it's not all that original, it's still impressive. One minute she was taut and motionless underneath my face and the next minute, after a series of blurry movements, she shoved me off, pivoted on her left foot and brought her bent legs up so they were pinching the outsides of my thighs and she was on her knees on my lap, facing me.

She jammed her ungloved hands under my coat, squeezing her icy fingers around my neck, pressing her thumbs along under my chin.

I jumped. "God! Olivia! Your hands are ice-freaking-cold!" I looked up to mock-glare at her, smiling just a little, thinking she was being uncharacteristically playful, that maybe her cold hands were a prelude to a warm kiss, maybe even a little park-bench grinding, since she already put herself into the right position.

As cold as her fingers felt, her eyes were even more so when they clashed with mine, and she squeezed her legs so her knees dug into the sides of my thighs. Hard. Enough that it actually hurt, and I sucked in a breath.

"Peter," she said. And she loaded so many shades of vexation, frustration, and irritation into just the two syllables of my name, I was still trying to sort them all out when she went on, her voice low and deadly serious, "If you keep trying to talk to me about this, I'm going to make you very, very sorry."

I half-expected her to smile, but she didn't. "I will not talk to you about this. I _never_ will talk to you about this because even if we find ourselves at the point where you are hoisting up into that machine I'll be out there looking for another way."

Her whole body was so fiercely tight, I was actually growing concerned about my throat, around which her hands were still securely fitted. "You and Walter have your sweet little talks about how much you mean to each other. And that's fine."

Her face was shuttered in a way that reminded me that nothing about this was fine. She shifted a little against me, tightening her knees, but I noticed with relief the pressure in her hands didn't increase. Leaning closer to my face she said, " I don't do that. I make ugly things stop. Or break things, if the situation requires. That's what I do. So if you want to sit around and make plans about what is going to happen after you're gone, you're going to have to do it with someone else. You got something to say to me Bishop, leave it in your will."

Jerking me toward her with her hands on my neck, she met me halfway and ground her lips against mine. She let up a little pressure on her knees, but only enough to allow her to shove me hard against the back of the bench. Her lips were cold and her tongue only slightly less so when it pushed into my mouth.

Not a one of these things prevented me from kissing her back, though. Realizing that I was courting personal harm, but not caring, I took my hands out of my pockets and slid them up under her coat, warming them along the front and back of her heated torso, before resting one hand on her belly, the other on her upper back. Her hands fluttered a minute on my throat and then thought better of it, curling back into the position they were in, and she pushed herself tighter against me, lowering her hips to press against my rapidly-hardening cock

When we needed to breathe or Olivia decided she'd made her point, I wasn't sure which, she pulled back and studied me with heavy-lidded eyes. It took me a minute to register it was mostly anger and not the familiar lust that was pulling at their corners. As usual, I was about as able to predict what Olivia is going to do as an Ouija board. I could tell she wanted me underneath all the anger because she seemed to pretty much always want me—it was the one constant in the ever-shifting sea of Olivia. If she didn't, you could be sure she'd have kicked me to the curb a year ago, at least. But other than that, I didn't have a clue what she'd do next. She might reach between us, loosen our pants and fuck me stupid here in full-view of everyone along the frigid river-walk. Or she might reach to her side, free her weapon and put a round between my teeth. That's what makes Olivia so exciting. The possibilities are endless and she never does the same thing twice, so around her you can never predict what's going to happen next.

I wasn't sure if I was relieved or disappointed when she did neither of those things. Instead, she shoved off of me onto her feet and turned away, stalking back toward campus. I waited just a couple of minutes and then followed her, watching the black rectangle of her overcoat bob ahead of me all the way back to the Kresge building.

As we walked the same direction but fifty paces away from each other, I considered that only Olivia could make a confession of love feel like a breach of faith and twist a kiss into a punishment for the offence.

See how much better it is to be mad at Walter.


	13. Chapter 13

**Sum over Histories**

by MVariorum

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><p><strong>Summary<strong>: Olivia comes back. Olivia and Peter save the world. Again.

**Rating**: M. So kiddies, the faint of heart, and those with refined taste should scoot along elsewhere. You have been warned.

**Disclaimer**: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.

**Spoilers**: AU after early season 3 (more or less around _Do Shapeshifters Dream of Electric Sheep?). _Includes some elements of the early part of Season 3, but no spoilers beyond that.

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><p><strong>AN:** If anyone out there is still reading (or still cares) this story is still very much being worked on and updated. I just write very, very slowly. Faster updates came earlier in the story because I had many chapters finished. I now have two other chapters nearly finished aside from this one. Also, I'll be out of the country for 12 days beginning Thursday, so I won't be around to reply to any comments. Any comments left will be petted and treasured, as always, when I return.

And, last, but not least, a big, loving thank you to my long-suffering beta, starg8fans, for reading things many, many times.

**Chapter 13**

A piece of white paper slapped down on the desk on top of the file I was reading, forced there by Peter's palm.

I turned and looked up at him.

"Read it," he said, removing his hand and gesturing to the paper, which I could now see was embossed with the letterhead of Boston's Four Seasons Hotel.

The handwriting was firm and left-slanted, the ink black, bleeding and slashy, like someone used a fountain pen and real ink.

_Room 4001. Tomorrow. 7.00 PM. Come alone._

"What's this?" I asked, swiveling in my chair to face Peter whose shoulder muscles I could see were already starting to creep up toward his ears.

Peter shrugged. "Looks like someone wants to meet me."

I watched him carefully. "Maybe you have a secret admirer."

"Maybe." he said and he crossed his arms across his chest and leaned against the desk with his hip while he looked down at me. "Either that or my life has finally turned into the Raymond Chandler novel it's been dying for three years to become."

I smiled a little, already weighing options. "It wouldn't be the strangest thing that's happened," I remarked.

Peter sighed and dipped his head to rub the back of his neck with a palm. "I'm going to need to borrow your 1911 tomorrow."

"We'll find you something that'll work," I told him, reaching across the desk to scoot my key ring towards him, since he knew one of the keys there opened the storage locker that housed all my weapons. "Sounds like I'll need it myself tomorrow evening." There was no question of Peter going alone, and I hoped he wouldn't argue with me about it. Surely he could see if the situation were reversed there was no way in hell he'd let _me_ go alone.

Peter's shoulders slumped as he reached to the desk to retrieve the note. He crumpled it and then shot it into the trash can across the room with perfect form, toes bouncing off the ground, fingertips following through to point downward after the wad left his fingers. After that he turned away from me and headed for the door.

"I really hope it's just a fan curious about the size of my cock," he muttered loud enough I could still hear him.

It's a testament to how truly fucked-up things had become that I found myself sharing the same fervent hope.

**(&&&&&)**

The next evening Peter and I walked into the doorway of the Four Seasons bundled and stiff from our two-block walk from the T-station.

After the smiling man held the door and welcomed us with the broadest string of "A's" to be had this side of South Boston we stumbled into the silent, luxurious lobby so warm and aglow with golden light the place looked like the hermetically sealed interior of a snow-globe.

We're not in the Howard Johnson's anymore, Toto.

It wasn't the kind of place where you sauntered in and headed up the public elevator to the room you wanted. A flawlessly coiffed, impeccably youthful woman behind the front desk wearing a discrete tailored blazer straightened and offered us an identically tailored smile.

"Welcome to the Four Seasons," she soothed. "Can I help you?"

Face blank, Peter nodded at her shortly like he spent every day of his life in eight-hundred dollar-a-night hotel rooms. "Room 4001," he said, and I watched as he caught and held the woman's gaze.

Her corporate-issue smile stayed in place as she kept eye-contact with Peter while she tapped on the computer shielded by the panels of the front desk. "Mr. Bishop," she said, a crack appearing in her fresh-varnished face when she looked at me uncomfortably, "We weren't expecting a guest."

Peter's face and demeanor transformed so rapidly from aloof politeness to warm intimacy, I blinked in surprise, even as I felt his foot press a warning into mine on the floor behind the desk. Composing my face into a bored stare, I half-turned and looked across the lobby, a position that allowed me to still keep one eye on Peter. I had no idea what he was planning, but he clearly wanted me to let him handle this.

He rested an elbow on the counter and dipped his head toward the clerk with casual intimacy, smiling his I'm-a-World-Class-Fuck smile at the woman I'd already begun feeling sorry for.

"This is Ms. Dunham," he drawled as he leaned a little further across the desk like he was considering whether or not to share a naughty secret with her. "She's with me." Somehow his voice, his words, and his body made this information seem both innocent and indecent, a casual explanation and a lewd proposition at the same time. Like maybe the three of us could go upstairs and he'd make good on the promises of that smile of his.

The woman swallowed and even _my_ stomach turned over at the sound of his uneven, gravel-covered drone, the exact same tone, incidentally, he'd used that very morning when, with one arm looped around my neck and the other around my waist, he'd growled filthy suggestions in my ear as he drove into me from behind.

Christ on the Cross. This was a side of Peter I'd _never_ seen. Off-color jokes, of course. Cheerful leering, and even the occasional illicit groping after we'd started sleeping together, but this kind of sophisticated, genial, balls-to-the-wall charm was something entirely new to me, so I stood there slack-jawed, snared in a bubble of charisma.

In all honestly, I didn't know for certain what Peter did before I drug him back here and made him cut-off Walter from his lifetime supply of padded rooms. I knew it wasn't legal, wasn't nice, and got him into trouble with the kind of people who legally changed their names to include the prefix "Big." But other than the very scarce hints he'd dropped in the last three years, I didn't know a damn thing. Didn't want to know, in point of fact, so I never looked, even though I could have made it my business to find out. In the beginning I was too afraid of discovering something I'd feel duty-bound to arrest him for, and later, after just a few weeks of having him around, I grew to value him too much to learn something that would have cast a shadow over the work he'd done here: for John, for me, for Walter, for every other person on this godforsaken planet.

But if he could switch it on like this, so smoothly, so easily, and to a _hotel_ _clerk_ no less, it was a wonder he didn't run the whole goddamned world. Or at least the half of it that wanted a penis attached to a voice and body like that.

The fact that the woman hesitated at all was evidence of how strenuously she'd been instructed to only let Peter past the desk alone.

Her mouth twitched in what looked like the beginnings of her real smile, and I saw her release a breath she'd been holding. She finally nodded at Peter, still not moving her eyes from his.

When we rounded the corner of the corridor to the elevators I snuck a look at him from out of the corner of my eyes.

My sneakiness didn't stop him from catching me though, and in an instant, almost as if reappearing under the force of my gaze, the lines of the Peter I knew settled back on his face, the creases thoughtful, wary, and pensive, with dark shadows of distrust slanted in the backs of his eyes.

"What?" he asked innocently. Too innocently, as if he thought I might ignore the fact that I'd just been introduced to one of his multiple personalities.

I just gave him my best blank look, largely because there were so many thoughts vying for attention in my mind at that moment I didn't have a clue where to start.

And then I didn't have time to dwell on Peter's interpersonal witchery any longer because the elevator pinged our arrival on the fourth floor. The doors slid open nearly silently, revealing three short corridors each with doors at the end of them. This must be the levels with the suites on them since there were only three doors, one at the end of each corridor.

I unbuttoned my coat and reached for my weapon. I already didn't like the look of this. It was a tactical nightmare. Anyone could come out of any of those doors at any moment and mow both of us down before I had time to release the safety on my weapon.

Peter glanced at me and raised his eyebrows, questioning my paranoia in spite of the fact that it had kept his shapely ass intact on more than one occasion. Then, he stepped out into the corridor without checking and I trailed behind with my weapon down but ready, eyes in constant motion.

Peter stood outside the room given for this assignation and glanced at me again as he raised his hand to knock. I kept my gun down but nodded agreement, and he rapped his knuckles on the back of the door.

I could have guessed for a million years and never imagined that Cassandra would be the one to open the door.

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><p>Break. Break. Break.<p>

Break. Break. Break.

Break. Break. Break.

Break. Break. Break.

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><p>Break. Break. Break.<p>

Break. Break. Break.

Break. Break. Break.

Break. Break. Break.

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><p>Olivia turned and looked at me accusingly like it was my fucking fault the bitch had more lives than Jean Grey.<p>

Cassandra beckoned us inside, obviously relishing our surprise and making only a barely passable attempt to hide it. We'd come this far, so Olivia and I stepped into the entryway which opened up into a cavernous suite.

At the far end of the room an Observer sat perched on the very edge of a high-backed Queen Anne loveseat. Approaching him across the expanse of the wide, high-ceilinged room, richly festooned in every cranny with luxurious golden fabric, felt more than a little like approaching the alter of a God, but Olivia and I did it anyway, and then stood shoulder-to-shoulder, facing him.

He sat so motionless on the silk upholstery that I wondered if he was breathing—if they even _had_ to breathe. His hands rested stiffly on his knees and, as we approached him, his head tilted first in one direction and then the other, watching us impassively. I wondered absently if they ever took their hats off.

In the background I heard Cassandra talking softly to someone from the doorway. By her tone I inferred it was an employee of some kind. It wasn't reassuring that Cassandra's behavior was the least bizarre aspect of the newest plot thread unraveling before my very eyes.

After studying us longer than it would take for anyone with halfway normal social skills to feel uncomfortable, the Observer abruptly announced that I could travel through time.

I kept one eye on Olivia (hard experience has taught me to _always_ keep one eye on Olivia) so I was able to actually watch the mask roll down over her face, concealing her shock and surprise.

After three years together I happened to know she reserved that particular brand of face-enamel for the moment right before she pulled out her gun and started firing at the things that displeased her. I estimated we had less than thirty seconds before the Observer or Cassandra (or both) were both wide-eyed and motionless with a bullet between the eyebrows.

Her shoulders twitched as she started to reach for her hip before she forcibly relaxed her arms and shoulders."Excuse me?"she asked, her voice meticulously polite.

"He can travel through time," the Observer repeated in the exact same tone as before.

When I just stood there and stared at him like an idiot (what the fuck was I supposed to say to that anyway?) the Observer added, "It's a gift," and he invested as much enthusiasm in his voice as he did for every other statement he made, which is to say, none at all.

"It's not my birthday," I told him flatly and out of the corner of my eye I felt rather than saw Olivia go stalker-still.

The moment was disrupted somewhat when a man in a uniform similar to the one the woman downstairs wore, pushed a catering cart into the room and glided it to a standstill next to another chair to the right of Olivia and I.

When Olivia turned and glared daggers at him, the poor bastard turned tail and near-ran back toward the door, half-crashing into Cassandra on his way back out.

He mumbled an apology and fled, and we all watched Cassandra close the door a little hastily before she glided back across the room to perch on the narrow arm of the couch next to the Observer. She put her hand on his shoulder, pressing down slightly as if the pressure was necessary to get his attention. She continued looking down at him, sustaining the pressure until the Observer turned his head and then tilted his chin to look up to her.

She smiled at him. Really smiled at him—fondly and kindly, so the creases at the edges of her mouth and eyes deepened and said, "Why don't we ask them to sit first before we explain why they're here." After a moment, during which the Observer and Cassandra stared at each other, the Observer's shoulder relaxed under the pressure of Cassandra's hand. Then Cassandra waved her opposite hand in the direction of the cart that I could now see contained a silver pot of what must have been coffee and cut-glass plates piled with food.

"Would you like something?" she said politely, raising her eyebrows at us like what we really came for was to try the pastries. She seemed totally unfazed by the fact that the Observer had not stopped staring at her, even though the time for him to politely drop his gaze had come and gone.

"No," Olivia said. "And we don't want to sit either." Her voice was still civil—barely—but I was still impressed with her self-control.

The Observer just moved his hands mechanically from his knees to his sides so they were resting lightly on the side of the sofa, and turned his head back to me, again taking up the stance of someone patiently waiting for someone else to make the next move so he could react to it.

He was in for a long wait. They brought us here. And unfortunately for me, I suspected it wasn't so Olivia and I could try out the high thread-count sheets.

They could start the talking.

Thankfully, Olivia decided to intervene. Cassandra seemed to want to turn this into a tea party, and I was already beginning to feel like the Observer had a predetermined number of words he was allowed to speak in a day and he was growing dangerously close to meeting his quota.

"Is there a _reason_ you needed Peter alone for this meeting?"Olivia asked and I could tell even through the steel in her voice that she was genuinely curious.

"Some of the information we plan to divulge," Cassandra said, carelessly picking at an non-existent thread on her pants, "might be somewhat disturbing. We worried that the emotional response of the two of you here together wouldn't be a good idea."

The Observer's face tightened minutely and there was a brief pause, then he blinked at Olivia and waited a few more seconds before he swiveled back to face me in that odd automaton way he had. "We made you," he said.

Ah, yes, there was the bizarre non-sequiturs that left me feeling like I'd been dropped into the middle of a series of conversations the Observer was having with someone else. "Yeah, I know," I told him, giving up the polite interest I'd been feigning. "Decanted along with all the other Alpha Pluses, I'm sure, but the sixty-four thousand dollar question is why?"

"There are no others," the Observer replied and his face flickered minutely as he computed across the layers of my sarcasm, "Just one."

"Uh-huh," I agreed, brushing the Observer's admission aside with a hand in the air, "So tell me about this brave new world I'm supposed to create."

"You are the Component," the Observer said, his gaze still fixed in that odd way that felt like he was looking at, into, and beyond me at the same time. I sighed and braced myself for the Observer's particular brand of Newspeak.

"The rift wasn't meant to be. It had to be healed. And the best way we knew to heal it was with someone who was from neither one world or the other, who was neither human nor of The People."

"But," the Observer paused and looked strangely like he might not continue, "we miscalculated."

He looked somewhere in the vicinity of my right ear, his gaze fixed in the empty space between Olivia and I. He didn't move a muscle or flicker his mouth.

"We miscalculated," he repeated. "We didn't allow for you," the Observer finished as his head swiveled and his gaze landed directly on Olivia now.

Olivia shifted her weight back onto her heels, leaning back slightly in the stance she took when she was bracing herself for some variety of personal devastation.

"And what does that mean exactly?" she said, glancing at me like she thought I might have a clue what he was talking about. I noticed her voice had the pinpoint-dead calm, I'm-going-to-batter-you-until-you-bleed, ring to it—her normally multi-timbered rasp washed-out and colorless.

"Or, Walter. The Walters," he corrected and he didn't take his eyes off of Olivia. "We did not anticipate the Cortexiphan experiments. Or the one Walter's experiments on Subject 13. We didn't calculate the repercussions of another Walter imprisoning that Subject and making her the recipient of her Alternate's memories. Most certainly we did _not_," the Observer emphasized the last word ever so slightly, but given his speech patterns, he may as well have screamed, "anticipate the connection Subject 13 would develop with the Component."

Olivia never shared much of anything about her childhood with me. It's not like we had the kind of relationship where we whispered fond memories about our pasts in the dark anyway. We just didn't lead that kind of life. Rachel had dropped hints on more than one occasion that Olivia had taken the brunt of their step-father's abuse, shielding Rachel and her mother to the detriment of her own safety. But I hardly needed Rachel to tell me that. I could infer pretty much everything I needed to about Olivia's childhood from what I already knew about her. She'd faced that brutality like she faced everything else: unflinchingly and without regard for her own well-being.

Apart from how and why she'd shot her stepfather, Olivia had said little about it. But I'd read Walter's papers. I couldn't _not_ read them, given their significance in our day-to-day work. I knew the harsh, clinical outlines of what Walter had done to Olivia and all those other children, most of whom were now dead. I'd read the bare, lurid narration in Walter's meticulous notes which catalogued nearly a year of her childhood. And frankly, it was the one thing I'd probably never be able to forgive Walter for. The unhappiness he'd caused Mom and I could be forgiven, at least on my part, though I couldn't speak for Mom. But what he'd done to those children—Olivia included—was beyond shameful. Olivia might forgive him. Or compartmentalize it elsewhere, like she did with the laundry-list of her other violations, but I never would.

The Observer turned to look at me, seeming immune to Olivia's growing defensive stance, which actually made me feel a flicker of grudging respect for him.

He tilted his head back in my direction. "You can travel through time. It is necessary for what you must do." His face returned to look at Olivia again. "And you," he shifted a little uncomfortably, "You, it seems, can stop it."

The Observer nodded at me sagely, "You were always intended to be in the machine," he said. "To reconcile the two worlds in such a way that they could re-knit themselves back together. It is your purpose to engraft the one Universe back onto the Other and heal the rift between them. The machine tore them apart. You are the Component designed to fuse them back together."

"_I'm_ the Component," I aped back to him stupidly. Olivia told me that Elizabeth claimed the Observers were the First People. That they made the machine to see if they could find a way to alter their own reality with it, and in doing so had actually split it into two worlds. But knowing that didn't exactly make me feel informed. As usual, I seemed to know fuck-all about what really seemed to be unfolding in front of me.

The Observer merely nodded. "Always designed as such. You are able to travel through time so you can regain what was lost when the worlds were violently separated. When you merge with the machine, that is what will happen.

"All right," I said, taking a deep breath around my growing temper. "I was designed—," I swallowed hard around the last word, "—_designed_ to put the Universes back together. The universes you royally _fucked_ when you made the machine in the first place, by the way. And then what? Once they are put back together they just go about their merry way? You must not have seen Nina's little snow-globe demonstration, then," I finished, my voice rising with my frustration and increasing anger.

"There will be consequences," The Observer said. "There are always consequences, but this—"

"All right, then," I interrupted him, "I can travel through time. Wonderful—" I jerked my head toward Olivia, "What does that have to do with her?" Olivia placed her surprisingly steady hand on my forearm, probably out of sheer habit to attempt to calm my rapidly escalating temper.

"It wasn't supposed to be this way," was all the Observer said.

Olivia grew like a cat confronted with a predator, causing her to nudge my shoulder since our bodies had drifted closer together in the last five minutes.

"What the hell does that mean?" I said, leaning into Olivia slightly, unsure if I was pursing the contact to make her feel better or myself.

The _only_ reason I'd already planned on getting in that machine was because the paltry evidence we did have suggested that doing so would ensure that the people and things I loved in this world would survive if I did. No fucking way I was getting into that thing now after what Tommy Lee Jones just told me. Not until such time as I had blood-signed contract in triplicate from him and all his brothers that everyone in both worlds would be safe.

Frustration finally got the better of me and I took a half-step forward, toward the Observer. The situation would have probably turned violent had I not been restrained by Olivia's hand, still on my forearm, and I stopped. I took a half-step back, aligning my shoulder with Olivia's sternum, half-protecting her with my body.

Cassandra eyes moved rapidly between Olivia and I, watching our unspoken communication and she said, "You know The People assisted Elizabeth in your conception. They made you because they believed you could help them rectify their mistakes."

The Observer added. "Elizabeth has meddled in these affairs—beyond what she should have—beyond what was anticipated."

Cassandra glanced at Olivia. "My—association—with Elizabeth all these years has allowed us to predict her actions at almost every critical juncture. If you know enough of the variables and allow a margin of error in your calculation, you can predict outcome of a series of events based on their probability."

She smiled a little at Olivia—they'd obviously had this conversation before. "Once those variables are known, outcomes can be calculated with a few simple equations. Under most circumstances, there is only a fraction of a hundredth percent that the outcome won't fall into one of the predicted parameters."

"Until you met in the field of white tulips," the Observer said, when Cassandra paused to take a breath. Something in his flat voice made it sound regrettably obscene, even though I was pretty sure his voice hadn't fluctuated at all.

Olivia's nails dug into my forearm now, the edges biting my skin even through my shirt. I had no idea what he was talking about, but if Olivia's reaction was anything to go on, she had some inkling.

"When things have gone awry of what we'd planned, the one constant seemed to be some sort of interaction between the two of you." Cassandra's lips twisted a little bitterly as she emphasized the final word. "Everything went along perfectly, from the time Peter was conceived until he was born, even after Elizabeth Bishop began meddling into affairs she had no business meddling in. Until you met."

Now I really was lost. This was like trying to fish with my hands. The minute I felt something sensible and solid brush against me it slid past me and fluttered away back under the murky water so I was left empty-handed again. I knew for sure that things were going haywire, certainly Over There, and even Over Here, long before Olivia and I met. So what the hell was she talking about?

"What the hell are you talking about?" Olivia asked, and I couldn't quite curb my surprised twitch. I wondered again just how comprehensive her mind-reading skills were.

No one had a chance to answer because at that moment, like the screen-writer planned a timely interruption, there was a knock at the door. It was a brief, polite rap followed by someone entering smoothly with a keycard.

I saw the gun before I saw the person. The long end of a disembodied pistol coming around the edge of the wall by the entrance, pointed in our general direction. And, just like that, the almost disturbingly easygoing conversation we'd been having in the golden glow of Boston's oldest luxury hotel erupted into dazzling motion.

I'm still not certain of the order of events after the four of us turned and faced the door when we heard the latch release. Everything felt like it happened at once and in a blur of motion.

Gunfire ripped through the room, even before the person operating the weapon was visible. Its discharge caused a cloud of smoke acrid enough to choke on, and a noise loud enough to make my ears ring.

Acting on pure instinct, I turned my back to the shooter and tackled Olivia, pushing her to the ground under my body, behind the cover of the sofa we'd been standing with our backs to when we faced Cassandra and the Observer.

At least the racket, I thought to myself as I dove toward Olivia, was likely to bring us some assistance in a hurry.

Halfway down, pain erupted and bloomed in my left shoulder and I yelped with the force of it.

We all froze in our positions like comic book characters restrained in our respective panels. Cassandra and the Observer still faced the entryway, and Olivia and I were tumbled on top of one another on the floor. A few seconds later, the smoke cleared and I could see, if not hear, again, so I took the brief second's respite we'd been given to look down at Olivia underneath me.

When I did, I registered with sickening horror that blood was soaking Olivia's shirt where she was still pinned under me.

Scrambling half-off of her, ignoring the pain in my shoulder that was growing to an excruciating throb, I started frantically running my hands over her, searching for the wound.

When Olivia's exasperated hands pushed at my own and she glared at me, clearly not in pain, I realized with relief that it wasn't Olivia's blood. A second later the dots between the throbbing in my shoulder and Olivia's blood-stained blouse connected, and I realized it was my blood that was going to send Olivia's suit through another round at the cleaners.

"Shit, that hurts," I gritted through my teeth, shifting a little, still mostly on Olivia, trying to get a look at my shoulder.

When I twisted, Olivia got the first look, and I really didn't need her eyes to widen alarmingly because the pain in my shoulder was serious enough to let me know that writing, not to mention eating would be a little difficult to manage unassisted for the next few days.

Olivia yanked her hand out between us and pressed it to the bloody mangle of flesh to stem some of the leaking blood, although I suspected it wasn't necessary. Luckily, the bullet had just grazed me, going from back to front on the very edge of my arm when I turned my back on the shooter to push Olivia to the ground.

I squashed down dread as I realized that Olivia was probably the shooter's target and gave a silent word of thanks that my responsibilities to a frequently drug-addled Walter had honed my reflexes to a scary-sharp point, equipping me to react quickly to all manner of unsettling developments.

Looking behind me I saw Cassandra and the Observer sitting just where they'd been a few minutes ago when the shooter had burst in, only now they were perhaps a bit more still, with their eyes fixed on the direction from where the gunshot had come.

I turned and looked in the direction where Cassandra and the Observers were staring.

When I saw who was standing there I looked down at Olivia still pinned under me, still pressing her hands to my bleeding shoulder. The shooter took two steps toward us on the floor waving the tip of the gun at us to stand up—a very big one—a .44 Magnum if my now blurred-with-pain vision was to be trusted.

I shoved Olivia's hand off the bloody hole in my shoulder and scrambled to my feet, offering Olivia my good hand to help her up once I was off of her. One she was up, I pressed my right hand to the wound myself and turned toward the shooter who now had the gun trained on Olivia's chest.

"Look honey." I deadpanned to Olivia, not taking my eyes from the doorway, "It's old home week."

"Hello mother," I added when Olivia didn't say anything.

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><p>Break. Break. Break.<p>

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><p>I don't have a lot of faith in .44 Magnum-round pistols. I don't know what Dirty Harry was talking about. The most powerful handgun in the world it may be, but all that power is wasted if you can't hit a fucking thing with it. Anyone who claims to actually be able to hit their intended target with that thing is either a liar or a fictional character. The subcompact Beretta I had stashed in my ankle holster, on the other hand, was as accurate and reliable a weapon as they made, and I leaned a little closer to Peter, inching the edge of my foot against his to remind him it was there.<p>

I wish I could say I was surprised to see Elizabeth Bishop show up here now. Maybe my abilities were inching toward precognition, or maybe I just read the summary on the flyleaf before I bought the book, but somehow Elizabeth's presence here, with a pistol so large it was obvious her slim wrist could barely keep it upright and pointed directly at my chest seemed exactly right. As if everything were falling into place just as the Fates had designed it.

I was suddenly hyper-aware of how very, very bizarre my life was.

Judging by the gaping hole in the wall behind Cassandra, the bullet had only grazed Peter when it mangled his shoulder, leaving a bloody, but mostly harmless wound in its path. Just enough that I'd have to listen to him whine about it for the next six weeks. Assuming we made it out of here alive and well enough for me to listen to him whine, that is. A few inches to the right and he'd have already gasped his last half-dozen breaths through an unfixable hole in his neck.

Although I honestly didn't believe Elizabeth would shoot Peter outright, I thought as I studied her. What I know about maternal feelings could fit into the tip of my pinky-finger, so maybe I'm just sentimental, but even before she fired the shot—even before I knew it was _her_, somehow I knew Peter really wasn't the target when she made that showy entrance.

Still, whatever the plan, a Magnum makes a big fucking hole. If Elizabeth really did decide to try and shoot me, the four feet that separated us would narrow the odds in her favor considerably.

Peter leaned away from the holster I was pressing meaningfully into his ankle, and I grew a little frustrated. I'm not sure what it was about weapons that made Peter shy away. He never carried one—of course he wasn't allowed to legally—but shit, that never stopped us from doing anything else illegal. Part of me thinks it's that he likes the extra challenge of using his brain and his mouth to get him out of whatever trouble he gets himself into.

Peter is a combative ass like that sometimes.

But I've seen Peter handle all manner of weapons, designed and makeshift, and he was a damned good partner to have in a firefight, so it wasn't fear or ineptitude. I'd witnessed personally how he fought with his hands and firearms with the kind of casual satisfaction I recognized largely because I experienced it myself. Yet he avoided guns whenever he could, liked to backhandedly taunt me for my over-attachment to mine, so another part of me wondered if he wasn't genuinely afraid of what might happen if he let himself enjoy it too much.

I saw the wheels turning behind Elizabeth's eyes as she watched me do the math. She smiled when she realized I finished and had calculated the odds in her favor. I had a brief, ill-timed epiphany when I realized Peter got, not just his brains from her, but his goddamned smile too.

What the fuck is it with the Bishops and their smiles? Generally speaking, when Walter and Peter trotted them out, they were about as reassuring as Edward Smith's promise that he counted the lifeboats.

Elizabeth nodded at Cassandra. "Cassandra," she said, smooth as you please.

Like it had been programmed into her, Cassandra nodded back, "Elizabeth."

"Well," Peter murmured, "now we all know each other's names," which earned him a dirty look from Elizabeth and I both.

"What Cassandra was just about to say," Elizabeth said, her gun hand not wavering, "is that I ruined their well-laid plans."

"What plans are those?" Cassandra asked.

Elizabeth smiled wider, lips stretching to show her perfectly straight, unstained teeth. "Yes, well, let's just get it all out of the table now, since all the villains are here," she nodded to Cassandra and the Observer with mock-seriousness. "It is the end of the story after all, and everyone wants to know our motivations."

Elizabeth raised her eyebrows at Cassandra and the Observer. "What was it you were about to share?" She looked up toward the ceiling, pretending to remember. "Oh, yes, that they think the two of you can operate the machine and fix everything," she said, tossing her head in the direction of Peter and I, but I noticed she wouldn't look directly at us.

Her eyes narrowed at Cassandra. "And that's sweet. Really, it is."

She glanced in Peter and my direction again, eyes still not lingering, and I filed away her reluctance to look at Peter directly for future use.

"But, you see," she explained, "I don't care a bit about what happens to this side. To ensure that my side survives, I need Peter to get into the machine and fix _our_ world. I'm here to ensure that everyone in _our_ world survives." She emphasized the plural a bit hysterically, and I kept my eye trained on the tip of the pistol.

"Which is why," she revealed, and her voice didn't even hitch with any emotion whatsoever, "You," she lengthened her arm, bringing the tip of the pistol closer to me, "are going to die."

Peter stiffened next to me as he digested this, and I did my very best not to project abject panic across our connection, although the attempt was probably in vain because I could no more control it when I was this distracted than I could use it to our advantage. It just required too much energy and concentration to be either a hindrance or a help.

But whatever Elizabeth's plans, I wasn't dead yet. I felt the serenity that always came with true terror wash over me—the half-mad tranquility I'd felt more times than I'd care to count that came from the certainty that I was likely to die very soon.

Elizabeth smiled again and then looked at Cassandra, "But don't let me interrupt your little party," she said, glancing at the catering cart. "Please, go on,"

Cassandra took a step toward Elizabeth. "I believe your intentions were good. I've always believed that Elizabeth," she said quietly. "You sent me Over Here to oversee the development and education of the children, but I've always known that you really made me as a companion —as a friend— to help you fight against Walter. To help work against the full-scale attack he was planning to launch."

Cassandra's chin lifted a little. "I knew that Elizabeth, even before I understood anything about friendship—compassion. You taught that to me long before I knew what to call it."

It was like a textbook demonstration of hostage negotiation. I'd sat through enough of the basic training they gave all agents to recognize it, even though it had never really been something I'd had any talent—or patience—for: call the hostage-taker by name, establish common ground, don't confirm or deny actions, deflect or redirect violence.

Elizabeth's face hardened and her eyes narrowed at Cassandra, "I should kill you right where you stand. I made you. And I can put you out of your misery just as easily."

At this, the Observer stood up slowly and stepped in front of Cassandra. I guess he was planning on stopping the bullet, and I wondered if his powers extended to stopping a Magnum round.

Maybe that's why Elizabeth chose such an extravagant weapon.

Elizabeth ignored him and turned back toward me, "Your gun, miss," she said, sounding more like the headmistress of a girls' school as she bobbed her chin at my side-holster. I reached for it slowly, using the sanctioned motion to shift my body as I did so my trousers raised slightly, making my ankle holster that much more accessible to Peter.

As I moved I glanced at Peter, who I noticed was going white and still, probably with pain. I unsnapped my holster and reached for the weapon.

"Uh-uh," Elizabeth chided me. "With your left hand please."

I nodded at her, never taking my eyes from hers, and reached across myself to remove my weapon with my left hand. After I placed it on the couch in front of us and backed a safe distance away from it, I asked, "Can I please get a napkin or towel from the cart for Peter's shoulder?"

Elizabeth's eyes skimmed over to Peter's shoulder, skirting his face again, before they returned to me. She nodded shortly.

I walked over to the cart, pleased to find that there were both warm washcloths, presumably for the wealthy to wash before they snack, and fabric napkins.

I gathered them up, checking the cart as I did so for something that might be helpful. Apart from the silver dome-covered plate of food and the coffee pot, there was nothing, unless I planned to sling the hot coffee at Elizabeth. I'd already considered it, but then dismissed it as an option. She was too far away and the design of the pot—silver with a narrow top and curled spout—made it unlikely the liquid would sail out of its container in any useful, flesh-scorching way.

I returned to Peter's side with the cloths, held them up to Elizabeth so she could see I had nothing else. When she nodded, I turned to Peter and he tipped his shoulder down so I could reach it better.

I looked at him, raising my eyebrows to find out if he wanted me to do this over or under his shirt. His jaw rippled with tension as he gestured to his shirt's hem. He grunted quietly when I lifted the fabric up toward his shoulders. He slid his good arm out first, and I helped him lift it over his head before I pulled it gently away from his bloody shoulder and down his arm, which he wasn't able to straighten completely for me to slide the shirt off. I lifted it up over his wrist, where he had it resting awkwardly across his torso, and dropped it onto the couch.

Returning to his side, I tore the tattered edge of his t-shirt back to the shoulder-seam. After inspecting the wound carefully, even my untrained eye could see the torn skin, underneath the mangled flaps of flesh, but there was a very clear projectile hollow running from the back of his bicep to the front.

I looked him in the eye and said, "Nothing in there, it just nicked you and went through."

Glad to hear it," he muttered when, with a final look at him, I pressed first the warm washcloth and then the napkin on top of it, laying my palm on top of that. When he hissed at the pressure, I squeezed his wrist where it still rested across his abdomen with my free hand.

"Now move over," Elizabeth said, waving her gun at Peter and I. We moved away from behind the couch and then turned to face Elizabeth, our shoulders angled toward Cassandra and the Observer, where they were still standing, hovering near the sofa along the outside wall. When I glanced at Elizabeth, I saw her swallow hard, her eyes cast down to the floor. "I want to see all of you," she over-explained. With a rush of comprehension, I realized just how unsure of herself she was.

Once we'd moved, I saw the Observer take another half-step, further shielding Cassandra's body with his and he tilted his head in one direction and then the other, meeting Elizabeth's eyes directly, as if we weren't all being held at gunpoint.

"There are a good many things I understand because of my position in time," he said slowly as if choosing his words carefully, "Because I can be aware of all possible futures at once. Because I've watched the direction of time change, just like that." He tilted his head to the left, still fixing Elizabeth with a faraway stare and paused briefly, as if thinking hard about which detail to share next. "There are things that cannot be predicted. Not just about you, but about all humans."

The Observer's voice had an odd relentless ring to it even though I was fairly certain his tone hadn't changed.

He leaned toward Peter and I and went on, "Human affection changes the course of time in ways that can never be predicted. Integrity, sympathy, loyalty, devotion." He glanced at Elizabeth. "And their opposites."

"That's touching, " Elizabeth derided.

"We've worked with The People for years Elizabeth," Cassandra said softly, stepping forward. "All of us. We had the same goals, you know. To repair the world—but not the same ideas about how to make it happen."

Cassandra took a deep breath, but her gaze didn't move from Elizabeth's face. "You sent us here Elizabeth, with nothing but our original programming and an overarching goal. What did you think would happen? We were programmed to adapt and change to our environment. We were here so long, interacting with humans, caring for them. We have not been able to explain exactly what happened. We couldn't fathom a return to our world, treated as machines, programmed by humans."

"I'm sorry things aren't turning out the way you planned." Cassandra went on when Elizabeth didn't do anything but stare at her, her face twisted with hatred.

Then Cassandra laughed a little, bitter laugh, "If it's any consolation, they aren't turning out the way we planned either."

Cassandra looked at Peter and then glanced at me where I was still standing at Peter's side, my hand pressed to his wounded shoulder before she looked back at Elizabeth. "I know you made those children in an attempt to keep Peter out of the machine. The Secretary's plans were growing fast and furious as he gained political power and I know you feared what would happen to both worlds if he succeeded. I know you hoped you could bring Peter back home to you . . ." Cassandra trailed off.

"I don't care what you think," Elizabeth interrupted her. "I'm taking Peter home. It's why I'm here. Peter will get into the machine, but he'll do it on the Other Side, not here. It's the best chance our world has of surviving."

She lifted her arm so it more directly pointed at my chest. "And he'll do it alone. Whatever it is he has to do, he was meant to do alone," and I wondered if anyone else could hear the desperate note in her voice, as if she was trying to convince herself.

My mind was still racing, trying to figure out if it was anything other than the self-interest she claimed had brought her here, so I was barely paying attention when Peter stepped in front of me, yanking me the rest of the way behind him with his right hand, placing himself between the end of the pistol and my body.

My left hand was still pressed, somewhat ridiculously now, against his wound, and when I tried to step back around him on his left side, he tightened his hold on me, his right hand so strong it was painful, the vice-like grip sharper than any Peter had ever touched me with. I gasped a little at the contact and he just squeezed harder, anchoring me in place behind him.

But it wasn't really like Peter to just blindly protect me—not this variety of protection anyway. At least not openly, and not after he'd had a chance to think about it—to consider that if we _did_ make it out of this alive and he'd treated me like a weak, simpering female, he'd never get laid again. And honestly, I rarely needed it since, as Peter was always quick to remind me, I was the one with the weapon and the legal sanctions to use it if need be.

Peter seemed to share my assessment that Elizabeth wouldn't shoot him. Although, frankly, after her near-hysteric claims about taking Peter home like he was merchandise to be shuttled back and forth between universes, I wasn't so sure.

He stretched his now blood-covered left hand toward Elizabeth in a gesture that looked a lot like part comfort, part plea. "Do I get any say in this?" he asked her, his voice so quiet and soft, he sounded almost hurt.

It was the first thing he's said directly to her after his sarcastic greeting, and Elizabeth's eyes widened at Peter's direct stare, like maybe she thought she could come to this side and try to ruin what little life Peter had remaining without having to actually speak to him.

Elizabeth's eyes narrowed at Peter, assessing, like she was trying to decide whether to trust him or not.

She didn't make him move from in front of me though.

"No," she finally said. "You don't get a say, but I want you to hear the lies they are going to tell, so at least you'll know why I've done the things I've done." And I felt some reluctant respect for her and the way she didn't buckle at Peter's direct question, or his tone. I'd been on the receiving end of that hurt tone of his often enough myself, and it always made me feel not only idiotic, but also insanely guilty, like I spent my free time kicking puppies for sport.

She looked at Cassandra and the Observer again. "Tell us about your outcomes—the ones you engineered. Oh, no, I mean _predicted_," she corrected herself with a sneer.

"Tell us what happened after Peter and Olivia met in the field of white tulips," and she made it sounds as dire as the Observer had made it sound a few moments before.

Cassandra looked reluctant, but when Elizabeth took a threatening step in her direction she said, "After you met," Cassandra nodded at us, "and then parted again, things went askew more frequently, more wildly, veering off course far, far more times than was statistically likely, and varying far, far more than we thought possible. In both of your lives. More interventions became necessary to keep balance—to keep the path of time unwinding along its most probable path—to keep this universe on the track it must go in order to survive. More interventions, unfortunately, always created the need for more interventions. The First People you see, can only see probabilities. Can only see possible outcomes, but cannot predict which of those will actually happen. That is up to human action."

"Which along the way cause ripples, consequences obvious and unforeseen." The Observer's voice sounded even more rote than usual, as if this were a recording he'd repeated dozens of times before.

We only know that, for whatever reason," Cassandra added, "When the two of you are together, when you work together, time seems to collapse back into the track it was meant to be in. We don't know what it means. We just suspect it's true."

"Let me propose another scenario to you," Elizabeth practically spit. "Over thirty years ago The First People found a woman desperate for a child and they lied to her and manipulated her into believing that they would help her conceive, only to allow that child to be stolen and brought up in another reality entirely, isolating him from her in another world, brought up to believe his fake parents were real, while his actual parents nearly died from anguish at his disappearance."

"A few years later that same woman learns what has happened, learns that her son not only lives, but lives in another world, kept there by the same People who promised her a child. She also learns that this son of hers is destined to die—was created, in fact, only for the express purpose of using some ancient device to reunite the worlds that the First People destroyed with their own arrogance and will."

She looked at Peter for the first time. "I've already lost you—I've come to accept that. But I won't lose everything else in my world as well. And I won't let you die in the machine over here. You will come home with me and you will separate the worlds so that ours doesn't disappear entirely."

"I have to trust that putting you in the Machine at home is the best way to ensure that our world survives. No one knows _anything_," she glared at Cassandra and the Observer meaningfully, "Not for sure. Think about it. It makes sense that bringing you home—where you belong—is the choice most likely to succeed."

Elizabeth stepped toward us both, staring at Peter, "You will come home with me now. Or she dies." And then she ruined her own Dirty Harry impression by the near-pleading note in her voice and she said, "It's the only way Peter, or I wouldn't be doing this."

"Why should we believe any of you?" I said, jerking my hand from Peter's grasp to move from behind him. I was suddenly terrified he'd believe Elizabeth. Or at least be willing to appease her and leave with her right now—just like I watched him do on that grainy hotel security camera with the Secretary over a year ago after he learned who he was and where he was from so long ago.

The Observer took two steps closer to Elizabeth and said, "The unique abilities Olivia developed as a result of the Cortexiphan experiments and her childhood association with Peter have made her uniquely qualified to pave the way for when he reunites the world. From what we have discovered about the nature of their connection, only she can ensure that Peter can complete the process."

A bit louder and with more finality than was necessary Cassandra added, "It's true that Peter must get into the machine—whether to reunite the worlds as we believe, or to separate them as Elizabeth believes isn't certain. What she's not telling you is that in order for him to finish—," She looked at me with narrowed eyes. "Olivia has to stop time long enough so he can complete the process."

"Long _enough_?" I asked, not at all pleased to hear the tremor in my own voice.

"No matter where Peter chooses to use the machine, no one can survive the process," the Observer clarified.

He looked at me again. "You must ensure that Peter finishes before he dies."

A pop interrupted the Observer then.

It was the last thing anyone said, because a half-second after that, an explosion ripped through the room.

Then everything went black.


	14. Chapter 14

**Sum over Histories**

by MVariorum

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><p><strong>Summary<strong>: Olivia comes back. Olivia and Peter save the world. Again.

**Rating**: M. So kiddies, the faint of heart, and those with refined taste should scoot along elsewhere. You have been warned.

**Disclaimer**: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.

**Spoilers**: AU (what the hell isn't these days?) after early season 3_. _Includes some elements of the early part of Season 3, but no spoilers beyond that.

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><p><em><strong>AN:**__ Thank you to all who reviewed and favorited last time. I reply to all reviews if your PM is turned on. Gratuitous Peter-injury (last chapter) and Olivia's ministrations (this one) is for my incomparable beta starg8fans, who indeed *is* the best beta in the world and I'm lucky to have her. _

_And I wholeheartedly agree: ffnet's formatting choices are as annoying as all get-out. You can't even go in and edit the html to allow for greater breaks between sections/paragraphs to create visual cues. So, horizontal lines represent the switch between Olivia and Peter's voice and the center-justified combination of symbols represents a change in time/scene within one of the points of view. Annoying, but necessary given the constraints of ffnet._

_Consider this official notification that it might be a while again before I post. I'm beginning to feel like I need to finish drafting the final chapters (not sure how many at this point) before I can finish Chapter 15. _

_Happy Holidays and enjoy!_

**%%%%%%%%**

**Chapter 14**

I came to flat on my stomach on the floor, coughing and choking on the thick cover of debris and explosives filtering through the air. After I cleared my lungs enough that I could breathe air rather than dust into them again, I called out Peter's name.

I hauled myself up, first to all fours, and then, when the darkened room stopped swaying, I pushed back onto my feet and used my thighs to raise my body up.

The room had been gutted. The walls were near-collapsing and there was a gaping hole in the side nearest the catering cart. I guessed that the cart was the source of the explosion. The blast seemed to have projected outwards since the outside walls were either gone or dangerously close to going. When I glanced, I could see that the door that led to the hallway was still closed, offering further confirmation that the bomb originated in the room and had exploded outwards.

Looking around frantically, I called Peter's name again, praying that he'd been as lucky as I obviously was. Stumbling and picking my way across the once-luxurious debris now twisted and scattered all over the room, I followed the sound of moaning I told myself sounded like Peter's voice, though it may have just been wishful thinking.

Several heart-stopping and muscle-wrenching moments spent hurling myself across the rubble, I discovered Peter was doing the moaning. I found him half under an overturned chair on the opposite side of the room.

Praising God he was at least still alive, although not moving as much as I'd like, I used the little energy I had left to shove away the chair pinning his lower half to the floor. I nearly sobbed with relief when he almost immediately drug his torso up so he was seated.

The sound of the crumbling building was soon drowned out by the noise of approaching sirens. Given their response-time, I guessed I had only been out for a few seconds after the bomb went off. I dropped back to my knees beside Peter. Touching his face with one hand and grabbing his neck with the other I kissed him, ignoring the taste of concrete dust and pulverized plaster that coated his lips and the inside of his mouth.

When I pulled back he was grinning at me. He was so obviously pleased with himself that I really wanted to hit him, but I was so endlessly grateful that he seemed mostly unharmed I decided to ignore it.

"Are we kissing in public now?" he asked, smiling so wide the white of his teeth near-blinded me in the gloom of the crumbling room.

Rocking back on my heels, I rose to my feet and pulled Peter into a standing position by his right arm, watching him cradle his left tightly against his chest. When he was finally upright, he swayed a little and then leaned heavily onto my shoulder when I looped his good arm around my neck.

"Bishop," I told him, thrilled he was not only alive, but obviously uninjured enough to be a wise-ass, "How many times have I told you it's better when you don't talk?"

"I thought you only meant that when we were fucking," he growled in my ear, but the moment was shattered when he leaned even more heavily on me and started alternately coughing and bending over, carefully lowering his left arm to cradle his ribs and I mentally added "cracked ribs" to his growing list of injuries that already included the gunshot wound and the myriad of bleeding cuts and bruises I was certain covered his body, though I couldn't see them in the half-dark.

I swear, Peter gets punctured, bloodied, and bruised more than any person I know. I sighed and tried to remember if he had enough cash in his wallet for me to get a cab home after he was admitted to the hospital.

I looked around to room, too distracted by our newest near-death experience to play any longer. The swirling red and blue lights of the law enforcement cars below added a bizarre, nearly club-like atmosphere to the disintegrating room.

The room was decimated, and yet somehow, we were still alive. I didn't know of any kind of explosive that would cause this much damage and yet spare the lives of the people near it. I guessed the blast was most likely of Cassandra and The Observer's design—perhaps put inside the catering cart before we even arrived. Then, I remembered Cassandra's quiet conversation with the hotel employee who brought the cart, and I considered it was quite possibly placed there once they knew Elizabeth was on her way to the room.

Not surprisingly, Cassandra and the Observer were nowhere to be found—probably beamed out to another timeline to avoid the nuisance of accounting for their actions to law enforcement, leaving Peter and I to shoulder—I rolled my eyes at myself when I recalled Peter's newest puncture—the dirty work.

I realized that Elizabeth was still unaccounted for. I assumed she vaporized into the atmosphere just like Cassandra and the Observer had, although probably not using the same outlandish technology, so I wasn't prepared to see Peter pull his arm off my shoulders and walk unsteadily away from me, picking his way across the room to a form on the floor I could barely see that was twitching slightly.

When I followed Peter over to the edge of the couch that the Observer had been sitting on, I saw him drop to his knees next to the person who, when I took another step closer, I realized was Elizabeth.

When I moved up behind Peter's shoulder and then shuffled to stand near Elizabeth's feet while Peter kneeled at her side, I could see she had been pierced with something sharp, a thick length of steel that looked like bent rebar, and it had passed through her body and pinned her to the floor. I glanced around quickly, trying to ensure her gun was safely out of her hands.

Just as I'd determined the pistol was nowhere in sight, Elizabeth's right hand lifted and twisted in the edges of Peter's blackened, tattered T-shirt and pulled, so Peter leaned over her.

With what looked like great effort she turned her head to look at Peter. And she actually smiled—a small smile that made cracks appear in spots on her filthy face. "Peter?" she said.

Peter reached between them with his left hand and covered her fingers in his own, careful to rest them on his thighs.

"Is this the part where we have a tender farewell conversation?" she croaked.

Peter smiled, but it was particularly grim, his lips stretched away from his teeth in a way that was nearly macabre. He just reached across her to move some of her hair that had been tossed across her face when she fell.

"Is that what you want?" he asked.

"Maybe," Elizabeth said, struggling as if she was going to try to sit up.

Peter pressed his free hand to her shoulder to keep her still. Glancing at the wound in her side now leaking blood fairly rapidly, I saw that the movement was hastening her blood loss.

Elizabeth let go of his shirt, unclenching her hand from the material to move languidly up Peter's arm to lightly brush his wounded shoulder. When she got there, through the shadows I could see her face twist in what looked like pain, a look so closely related to what I privately called Peter's kicked-dog look that I almost felt sorry for her.

Peter obviously saw it too. "I remember you," Peter said, so quietly I had to lean in towards them somewhat rudely in order to hear. "I was little. So little that when I sat at the table I couldn't see over it. There were muffins. And you put raisins in them but I didn't like raisins, so you picked them out for me and ate them yourself."

Elizabeth smiled a little, but her eyes were no longer looking at Peter. They were sparkling bright in the dark, glassy and staring off into a space somewhere over Peter's right shoulder.

"I don't think you should trust them," she said so low I barely heard.

"We weren't planning on it," Peter told her, and I heard him swallow loudly in the now preternaturally quiet room.

Elizabeth turned her head slightly toward me and I saw her hand almost convulsively curl into Peter's shirt. She coughed and Peter pressed harder on her shoulder to keep her still and prevent her from struggling against the bar that pinned her to the floor. "That one," she said and she moved her face from me back to Peter, "She's fierce."

Peter smiled at her. Or, at least something a good deal closer to a real smile. "I know."

"I had no idea," Elizabeth said, and she spent a few seconds choking on blood that was now leaking out of the corner of her mouth, "I had no idea when you two met it would be like this."

Peter shifted a little on his knees next to her. I could see the curiosity in the alert twitch of his shoulders, but I doubted he wanted to press Elizabeth for details in what was likely her last moments. I had my own growing suspicions about the field of white tulips the Observer had mentioned, but it was hardly the time to sort through all that now.

I wasn't sure what to do, so I stood there, feeling like an unwanted attendant, while Peter held her hand and we both waited for her to die.

After that there were no more words, just the vague retreat of someone dying. Real death is a good deal slower and less dramatic than the way it looks in the movies. Elizabeth coughed and twitched for a while and then grew silent. She continued to reach for Peter intermittently for several minutes, even after it was clear she no longer knew where she was.

The emergency personnel showed up hollering and trying to shove Peter away, so I was finally able to make myself useful. I didn't need a medical professional to tell me that there wasn't anything they could do to plug the softball-sized hole construction-grade steel had made in Elizabeth's abdomen. I dug my credentials out of my tattered jacked (after I found it across the room under a decorative throw pillow) and did some yelling and shoving myself to give Peter and Elizabeth some room.

Even after Elizabeth was dead and Broyles appeared as if by magic, Peter still sat next to her, holding her hand and I didn't have the heart to make him move, so I stood behind him and glared daggers at anyone foolish enough to venture too close.

Finally, when the medical examiner arrived with their gurney and zipped body-bag, Peter turned and looked at me. When I just blinked at him neutrally, he slipped his fingers out of Elizabeth's hand, rocked back from his knees to his heels, and stood.

I waited for Peter, and when he limped to my side, we turned and walked out the door, nodding to the medley of government officials now uncomfortably twitchy and gathered in a circle around Broyles. I'd already given a carefully neutral account to the first responders, and shortly after that, a real account to Broyles who stepped in and made the people who didn't have the right clearance disappear.

I nodded at Broyles as we passed.

Of course, Peter denied medical care. When I'd protested, pointing out he probably had a concussion and cracked ribs in addition to the untended gunshot wound, now most certainly multiplying bacteria at an alarming rate since it had been left open to the filthy air for so long, he'd snarled, "If you can wander around AMA whenever it suits you, so can I." And I had the good sense to leave him alone.

We didn't speak on the way home. Peter stared out the window of the cab Broyles called for us and I silently watched him bleed on the plastic upholstery, idly wondering if we had enough 4x4's and Steri-Strips at home to patch him up when we got there.

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><p>Break. Break. Break.<p>

Break. Break. Break.

Break. Break. Break.

Break. Break. Break.

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><p>Break. Break. Break.<p>

Break. Break. Break.

Break. Break. Break.

Break. Break. Break.

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><p>Olivia and I made our way home from downtown under the heavy weight of thoughtful silence.<p>

By the time we got home it was late and the house was dark and silent. Walter wasn't awake. He was a die-hard proponent of the Better-Living-Through-Chemistry principle, so he must have loaded himself up with drugs to put off learning whatever less-than-cheerful news he suspected Olivia and I bring home with us. I slid out of my blackened shoes (my shirt and coat was long-gone) and wandered into the kitchen, Olivia trailing behind me. I stared at the counter unseeing while Olivia dug out the first aid kit and then cleaned and bandaged the hole in my shoulder.

I even bit back the snarky comments when she frowned and remarked that the wound needed stitches for it to heal properly, but I was upset enough that not even vanity could persuade me to let anyone else touch me at the moment.

But when she rather roughly hosed the wound off with antiseptic, I hissed and glared at her. She narrowed her eyes at me and snapped, "You want TLC? Go to a hospital and charm an intern. You wanted me, so this is what you get." So I shut the hell up because even Olivia's curt words and painfully brusque hands as she bandaged the wound and then slapped the cross-sections of tape across my bruised ribs were still about a hundred times better than sitting in the ER all night waiting for some stranger to stitch and patch me up.

The time I sat there holding her hand, waiting for Elizabeth to die, had felt utterly unreal. Rather unsettlingly like the experience of a dream when you watch yourself participate in wildly improbable activities from afar.

I'd felt about Elizabeth just about the way I'd felt when the children had died. It didn't feel real; she didn't feel like she belonged to me. I only felt the unconnected sympathy and vague regret that someone was dying right in front of me.

And connected to the feeling that Elizabeth's death was unreal was the inescapable fear that I didn't actually exist either—that I was a figment of Walter, Olivia, and my imagination—and clever camera angles had contrived to hide that fact from the viewers these three years. I tried to recall if anyone else had actually witnessed me conversing with Astrid or Broyles.

Like my entire existence was a folie à trois to end all folies à trois.

I'd been slowly coming to terms with the fact that I wasn't entirely human since I'd extracted the story of my conception and birth from Olivia and forced her tell me face-to-face, word for word, what Elizabeth had told her that afternoon just before she barbequed the lab and rid us of Elizabeth's minions. So I'd known for a while now that I wasn't fully human and I wasn't here for any reason other than to fix someone else's mistake.

You wouldn't think that so much of your identity is tied up in your origins—in how you came to be on this planet, in this reality. I've always imagined that I am who I am because of the things I've done, the places I've been, the people I've met and held in regard for one reason or another.

I'd always believed that identity was the sum total of experience, entirely unrelated to the chemical and mechanical workings of the body. I'd remained a card-carrying believer in the Cartesian myth that equated identity with consciousness, in spite of a large amount of evidence to the contrary. But what if it turned out that all that really mattered was the physical? I guess if that were true, it at least explained why Olivia was so much further ahead of the game than I was in using her abilities and understanding our connection.

How could I ever understand who I was if all the events, all the details of my existence had been watched, designed, and orchestrated by the Observers? If the Observers had manipulated every aspect of my life, then my entire history was now meaningless since, if they already knew how the story ends, nothing I did in the middle had any bearing on the outcome at all.

Now Elizabeth was dead—I still couldn't bring myself to think about her as my mother, for all the half-invented memories I'd tried to soothe her with during her last moments—and I wasn't any closer to understanding who or what I was and what I was here for than before.

Was I really just a "component?" A tool designed and created by the Observers, by my own mother? An object designed to fulfill a prophecy of the Observers own making?

Olivia was slamming things back into the medical kit, swiping up the remains of the T-shirt she'd hastily cut off of me and the bloodied gauze pads she'd used to clean my arm. She swept the whole mess into her arms, walked across the room and dumped them into the trash can.

Stretching up on her tiptoes to reach into the cabinet over the stove, she fumbled around through the cereal boxes and fished out the Percocet I hid after my last round of injuries. She crossed the room with long, irritated strides, got a glass of water from the sink and slammed the pills and the water glass on the table next to me.

I swallowed the pills without comment. I was well aware that the latest run-in with my Addams-family relations had just about exceeded the limits of Olivia's tolerance. Of course, none of that was my fault, but I'll be damned if Olivia didn't have a way about her that always made me feel guilty nonetheless.

Olivia finished and closed the kit. She shoved it onto the counter so it slid into a corner and stalked out of the kitchen.

I sat there stupidly for a few minutes before I wandered up the stairs behind her and followed her into the bedroom.

By the time I got there Olivia was a few paces away, unbuttoning her jacket which now had holes in the elbows and a torn lapel. She pulled it off her slumped shoulders and leaned to throw it over the end of the bed.

Grimacing at her smoke-and-blood covered shirt, she thought better of it and tossed the jacket into the corner near the trash can instead, saying, "If I have to endure another of your family reunions you're going to have to cough up some of your Massive Dynamic dividends to pay to replace my wardrobe. My government-employee salary can't support what it takes to hang around with you and Walter anymore."

I watched as she unsnapped the side-button of her near-shredded trousers and yanked them off, balancing on first one foot and then the other before they followed on top of the filthy pile in the corner of the room.

"If we both live through another family gathering, I'll buy you more identical black suits than you can possibly wear in a lifetime," I promised her, still unable to shake the sickening suspicion that at any moment, the instant I'd served my purpose, an Observer would wave a wand somewhere and I'd wink out of existence altogether.

She was reaching for the buttons on her shirt when I stepped toward her and said, "Tell me that's not me." The words tumbled out before I comprehended that I was talking to Olivia, and so had probably come to the wrong place for blind reassurance. She stopped and turned, tilting her head as she watched me carefully, openly searching for clues to what was bubbling underneath the surface of what I suspected was a poorly-arranged blank face. I honestly didn't ever want to know what she saw when she studied me, since I was pretty certain my fragile identity wouldn't be able to take it. I watched the things she considered saying to me flicker along the backs of her eyes as each was tested and discarded for one reason or another.

Her brow furrowed into a frown when she finally settled on, "Is that what you think?"

Of course that's what I thought, and my face showed it. She smiled at me. Smiled. Like I'd said something funny or endearing.

Maybe I just imagined it. It was entirely possible; I could already feel the anesthetizing effects of the Percocet seeping into my bloodstream, it having bypassed my mostly-empty stomach.

Olivia stepped toward me, dipping her head down slightly so she could better see my face. Her eyes widened a little in surprise at what she found there. "But how can that be?" She said it so kindly, so casually, the phrase stripped of all its interrogative, so it sounded like the only possibility.

After what had just happened, I needed her. I didn't give a damn about the long day, or my injuries. I needed her _right now_. To make me feel like a person and not like someone's fucked-up, misconceived science experiment. An inhuman mistake that got lost somewhere in the wrong time-line. Whatever else I have been or plan to be someday to Olivia, I was always a person to her. Not someone's son—lost or found or dead—or someone's savior. Not a genius or a fuck-up. Just me. In fact, I suspected that Olivia valued that about me—that there was only one of me—pretty much above everything else.

I put my good arm around her waist and pulled her toward me, smothering her surprised squawk with my mouth. Dragging her against me, I backed us both up against the wall next to the door and circled her waist with my right arm and lifted. She wrapped her legs around my hips as I hoisted so I could flatten her up against the wall until she was a little above me, her chest even with my mouth.

Kicking the door shut with my foot, I forced her head down to mine and jammed my mouth up against hers.

It was essential that I not surrender any contact between our bodies at any point, even though the panting breaths rushing in and out of our lungs in two-part harmony made it difficult to keep my lips against hers. Especially since Olivia kept trying to talk, finally yanking her mouth away from mine long enough to glare at me and snap, "Don't come whining to me when you fully break your already cracked ribs."

It wasn't a question, so I didn't bother to answer. Frankly, by then most of my higher thinking skills had gone the way of the dinosaur anyway. To punish her, when I let her lips go and buried my face in her neck, I didn't try all that hard not to leave a mark with my mouth and teeth.

"Damnit, woman, don't you own anything but button-up shirts?" I bitched into her chest a few minutes later after I'd let up on her neck and my lust-thickened and injured hands found it difficult to open the buttons that were on the wrong side for me.

I got a bit ear for my troubles. When I growled at her and jerked my neck from her mouth by way of sucking the superfine skin that covered her collarbone Olivia wrapped her hands around my neck and dipped her mouth down to my ear where she bit another warning on my lobe. "Call me "woman" again and I'll bite something you'll miss a lot more than an earlobe."

The threat didn't even register since that was the moment I finally got the buttons of her shirt free and was giving a silent hymn of praise that Walter hadn't finished this week's laundry. Olivia was wearing the one girlish bra she owned. Well, girlish by Olivia-standards anyway, meaning it was still practical cotton and dark grey, but this one was graced with a front hook. Not that I give a damn what kind of bra Olivia wears, so long as it allows me access to its contents, but right now there was no way I could have loosened one with a back clasp, or, god forbid one of those pullover styles she sometimes favors. My arms were mostly useless, so the only thing holding us both up was Olivia's legs wrapped around my middle and the pressure I applied by pushing her back against the wall. If she leaned forward for me to undo her clothing, we'd both slide to the floor.

With a flick of my fingers I unhooked her bra and it snapped open so her breasts fell into my hands. I gnawed on her neck for a few minutes longer while I cupped her breasts, causing Olivia to moan and then squirm between me and the wall. I ground my hips against hers, drawn by the heat I felt there, regretting that my lower body was still trapped in my clothes. Nuzzling the welts her bra made on the bottoms and sides of each breast, I finally settled on the left, closing my mouth over her nipple and pulling, which made Olivia add high-pitched whines to the moans already issuing from deep in her throat.

Surprise made me pause for a moment. It's not like Olivia to make much noise at all. Usually, with the exception of a few gasps and some quiet moaning she's as quiet as a prison inmate in bed—something I enjoy teasing her about immensely when I'm feeling especially courageous. Besides, Olivia is pretty adept at letting me know what she wants by the simple mechanism of grabbing me by my ears and shoving me in the desired direction, so it's not like communication in bed is ever a problem.

Olivia unwrapped her legs from around my waist and slid down my body a second before she reached for the belt and button on my jeans and swiped them down roughly so I could step out of them. By the time I'd finished that, she'd shrugged out of her shirt and underwear. A moment later, she wrapped her arms around my neck on top of my shoulders and pulled, yanking me towards her as she sank back onto the bed.

The Percocet must have made me woozier than I initially thought. My good hand shot out instinctively to catch her around her waist in an effort to right my tilting world.

I almost lost my balance, which would have been disastrous, and probably would have concluded my day with a visit the ER I'd been so fiercely avoiding, which would have been a crying shame since my day was finally looking up. Luckily, the bed was a big enough target and only a couple of steps away, so I managed to hit it after shuffling a couple of jagged steps and falling on top of Olivia, bracing myself with a hand outside of her left shoulder to keep from crushing her. She scrabbled back a little on the mattress and dragged me up to follow her when my feet slid a little on the floor as she wrapped her thighs around my waist and her hands fumbled for my hips.

"Now Peter," she ordered in her demanding, out-of-control voice, the one that pretty much guaranteed I'd come in about three hot seconds.

"Oh thank god," I praised, as I shoved into her, unwilling to wait one more second to feel the tight, wet heat of her body closing fast around mine.

I'm not sure if Olivia was responding to my neediness or if she was dealing with her own issues, but things were spiraling out of control between us very fast. Olivia's knees clutched so tight on my waist when I finally found my way inside her I knew she was adding her own bruises to the potpourri of contusions that already covered my body. And that was nothing to the tunnels her nails carved along my back when I pulled away and thrust back into her. Her clawing hands and tight, thick breaths, not to mention her squirming hips that met me hard and fast on every thrust lit a fire somewhere deep in my abdomen.

It took me a few seconds to register that Olivia was shoving at my hips with her hands, pushing me away, and I faltered in my rhythm. She took advantage of it to push me off of her and shove me onto my back. She scrambled astride me, and in another second I was back inside her, her fingers linked around my wrists where my hands gripped her waist tight enough I knew I was making my own marks for her to find on her fair skin tomorrow.

I braced myself with my feet on the mattress and lifted my hips as gravity drove her back down on top of me each time. She leaned back a little onto the plane of my thighs, wrapping her arms around and under them, using her knees to keep her hips driving down on me. A while later, when she was shaking from the exertion and deep pants were escaping her throat every time our bodies met, my feet started to slip on the bed, making it more difficult for me get enough purchase to lift my hips to meet her downward thrusts.

When my feet slid almost completely out from under me, causing me to miss the rhythm, she growled at me. "Don't stop," she threatened, her voice commanding as a General in a firefight. "Don't you dare stop, Peter."

I was so desperate for her it was easy to ignore the throbbing of my ribs and the burning in my stomach and thighs. Using as much of my upper body as I could control, I hurled myself up again toward her in a single shove and got my feet back under me to drive into her hard and fast. Olivia gasped, and a low, deep moan that rarely happened, but always signaled an orgasm when it did, rumbled up through her chest into the back of her throat. The moan raised a notch in volume as her orgasm overtook her. While I kept shoving up into her with my hips, I pulled her forward onto me by disentangling one of her wrists from behind my thighs, and covered her mouth with my free hand to muffle the sounds that were escalating into the neighborhood of yelling. I really didn't want to discuss Olivia's all-too-rare sex-noises _and_ the end of the world with Walter over breakfast.

She fell forward, her forearms braced on my chest, the tangled hairs from her mangled ponytail sticking wildly to my face. My hand still covered her mouth and her teeth nipped the skin of my palm as she shuddered and tightened against me.

I wanted more of her—all of her. I wrapped my arms around her neck and upper body and rolled until she was on her back, finding my way back into her with a well-placed thrust. She was still moaning and thrashing through her orgasm as I picked up the pace and drove into her faster and faster, so hard if she hadn't been urging me on in that throaty voice of hers I'd have worried I was hurting her. I felt like I didn't have enough hands to touch her, enough surface area on my body to cover every inch of her skin, and no matter how widely I cloaked her, how ferociously I drove into her, I was still too far outside, still on my own, cold and wanting.

Digging my hands under her upper back and working them up to the top of her head, I tucked her face into my neck and surged forward again. On the next thrust Olivia did something with her hips, angled and lifted them, and I slid into her even deeper as she wrapped her legs around me higher on my waist, so tight while she still shuddered though another orgasm I could hardly move. I couldn't push my hips anymore she held me so tight, but I tried anyway, my own body straining against all the parts of Olivia's locked hold, even though I wasn't able to do much more than ripple against her, every part of her body clasping me so tight all I could do was grind myself furiously into her flesh and bone. "Please," I begged her, but I couldn't have explained what I was pleading for with a gun to my temple.

My knuckles were now whitened and tangled in her loosened ponytail as I drove harder and harder into her, her body now taut and shuddering against me. Another moan tore out of Olivia's throat, her mouth so near my ear I heard every note of it, and the sound and the feel and the taste of her suddenly overwhelmed me and I pitched over the edge myself, groaning and shuddering against her so madly, so inelegantly Olivia would have laughed at me had she been coherent enough to do anything other than arch against me herself.

I dozed off after that, still on top of her, my softening cock slowly retracting from her body.

I woke up some unknown amount of time later to Olivia's hands tracing small-firm patterns around my upper back and our skin adhered to each other with drying bodily fluids. I honestly don't know how she stood it. Olivia isn't a small woman by any means, for all the hollows of her still-too-thin frame, but she's still a good deal smaller than me. She had to feel like she was pinned under a boulder.

"I took a nap," I muttered into the moist heat my breath had made on the skin of her neck.

"I know," she said, her voice amused. "How was it?"

"Good," I answered. "Not sure I can move, though," I warned her. "I'm pretty sure my body isn't taking any calls from my brain right now."

One of her hands trailed down my spine and the other skimmed up to knead the muscles in my neck. "You're fine right where you are."

"Not too heavy?"

"Uh-uh." She said, almost sing-song, and I could tell she was about ready to fall asleep herself. "Baby bear."

There was a long pause while I tried to follow her line of thinking, unsure if I couldn't because most of my blood was still en route back to my brain or because her reasoning was flawed in the flood of post-orgasm hormones. She turned her head toward me and guided my mouth to hers with a hand on my neck for a lazy, half-asleep kiss. "Just right," she added, and I finally snagged the edges of her logic.

I still can't remember if I mustered the energy to roll off of her before we both fell asleep.

* * *

><p>Break. Break. Break.<p>

Break. Break. Break.

Break. Break. Break.

Break. Break. Break.

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><p>Break. Break. Break.<p>

Break. Break. Break.

Break. Break. Break.

Break. Break. Break.

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><p>"Well, it makes sense," Walter said, staring hard at Peter while lifting his coffee cup to his mouth.<p>

The next morning Walter was up way too early, banging hard on Peter's bedroom door to wake us before he tumbled down the stairs with a clatter. He'd rightly guessed last night's meeting would mean there was Weird Science to be discussed and he'd wanted to get started right away.

Peter took point on this one, even before he finished his first cup of coffee. Given that his morning mood was never good, not since I'd known him at least, I knew I owed him for this one. He quickly summarized the events of the previous evening for Walter: Elizabeth's dramatic entrance, her threats, and her subsequent death (careful to minimize his own injuries so we wouldn't have to listen to Walter wail), the choice Peter had to make about the Machine, and the disappearance of Cassandra and the Observer.

Since the newest revelations were associated with Peter and I together, Walter was just this side of giddy. I considered that given Walter's restless excitement benzodiazepine would be a chemical preferable to caffeine, but it would have been rude to deny him coffee when Peter and I were both sucking it down ourselves like it was going out of style.

We were all sitting at the kitchen table—our own little kitchen drama—one chair empty so those looking through the proscenium could see all the characters.

"Which part Walter?" Peter asked, his voice flat and still thick with slumber. He was blinking away sleep, digging one of his knuckles into the corner of one eye, his face sleep-glazed and slack. I'd never tell him this in a million years, but even with the nasty mood, Peter's morning bleariness was probably my favorite look of his. It normally takes him a while to wake up, and while he does he's appealingly rumpled and blurry, too un-caffeinated to be a smart-ass, too fuzzy to be arrogant, too slow-witted to guard his expressions.

He slid his hand across the table to rest on my forearm, squeezing it and nodding in the direction of the coffee pot next to me, silently asking me to pass it to him. He was also less likely to talk and a lot more likely to touch, which also probably accounted for why I liked him this way so well.

"All of it." Walter said calmly after he swallowed a sip of his coffee. "You and Olivia's consciousnesses are linked. It's been that way for years and it has to be that way for a reason. That's why I've been urging the two of you to accept it and learn to understand it. Whatever affinity you have for the machine is connected through Olivia somehow, I'm sure of it. It makes sense that Olivia must assist when you get into the machine. In fact, I have formulated something that could—"

"For years?" Peter interrupted, his eyes scanning the different areas of Walter's face, his voice dead-calm. "How many years, Walter?"

Walter just looked away.

Peter waited a few polite seconds, sipping his coffee, but his eyes never left Walter's face.

"Walter?" Peter asked.

Walter's face crumpled. He placed his coffee cup on the table, probably to keep his shaking hands from sloshing it out of the sides of the cup. His lips trembled a little, but he forced himself to look at Peter.

"I didn't know," he said. "Or, I didn't remember. I've forgotten so many things. And I only just remembered."

When Peter didn't say anything else and Walter stalled long enough to figure out I wasn't planning to wade in and help, he studied his hands and said, "You met as children. When we were in Jacksonville."

Peter rested his cheek on his hand, staring at Walter, eyebrows raised, waiting for him to continue.

So Walter told us about our first meeting, since we clearly couldn't remember it ourselves. It was not in an Iraqi hotel lobby, as we both thought, but in a daycare center in Jacksonville.

"But I didn't know anything about a field of tulips." Walter's face was creased with confusion. "Other than the fact that there was one in Jacksonville. A botanist who missed them from his home country designed them so they could grow in Florida's climate."

I had suspected as much myself for reasons I wasn't entirely prepared to deal with at the moment, although I didn't know all the details until Walter shared them. I decided not to give too much energy to that thought now. We'd probably have to deal with it soon enough.

"It's fascinating," Walter was musing, "I wonder if The Observer and Cassandra appreciate the irony of what they are urging you to do—to explore your human connection."

Peter took a sip of his coffee and rolled his eyes, which Walter somehow construed as encouragement and he smiled.

"Okay Walter," Peter said, resting his cheek in his right hand. "So how does this work?" It was somewhat reassuring that he wasn't any more excited about this than I was. "I mean, what, I get in the machine and we think together and somehow the world heals itself?" Peter was still too sleepy to even inject much sarcasm into his words.

"I'm not sure," Walter said, "but I don't think it's as simple as that." He leaned forward and stretched his hands out to either of his sides, one toward Peter and the other towards me. His voice took on the desperate intensity I was used to hearing from him when someone's life hung in the balance.

"I don't think the answers lie in science," he said, "or at least in the kind of science that we can understand. I think the answer to this has to do with who you are. Some essence of yourself that science doesn't yet have a name for. It's just like Elizabeth—the other Elizabeth—told us. We have no reason to trust that information of course. But it's been confirmed by what we already understand about the force of Olivia's powers when it comes to you Peter. What we know about the machine's response to you. Only to you," Walter added, "and not to others who share your genetic makeup."

Walter curled his fingers into Peter's clasped hands stretched out on the table. "It's not just your body that runs the machine Peter. Not just DNA. If that were the case, Walternate, or Elizabeth would have found another way. Your offspring, for that matter, would have been capable of powering it up and operating it."

Peter closed his eyes briefly at the mention of the children. He'd not yet so much as mentioned their presence to me, which is how I knew how deeply conflicted he was still about his relationship to them. I suspected he hoped to die in the machine before he had to address his biological paternity with anyone at all.

Walter looked at Peter. "Cassandra and the Observer said that the worlds must be reunited?" Peter's nod confirmed Walter's worlds.

"And Elizabeth said they had to be separated," I added. I looked at Walter when he didn't offer any explanation. "So which is it?" I asked.

Walter frowned and shook his head in a silent non-answer to my question. He was still looking at Peter. "They said you could move through time?" Peter nodded. "And Olivia can stop it?" Peter nodded again.

Walter paused for a long moment, pondering the ramifications of this. Peter sighed and grabbed the coffee pot. He refilled my cup and topped off his own, pushing the sugar bowl toward me silently with his fingertips.

"I can see how that might work," Walter said slowly.

When Peter snorted—the one noise communicating how utterly ridiculous Walter's speculations were—Walter just ignored him saying, "We already know that what the two of you can accomplish together is far beyond what you can do alone. Because of what you understand about each other."

He paused again, brow furrowing, and I could practically see the wheels turning behind his forehead.

Peter's eyes flew to Walter's face, comprehension seeping into his own. He glanced at me furtively as if trying to gauge my reaction and then he looked at Walter. "Walter," he said, "is that what you were trying to do? . . ." his voice trailed off and then he closed his eyes again when Walter nodded at him.

It wasn't the first time in the last three years I'd sat stupidly by, utterly in the dark while these two had their silent, Geniuses-Only conferences, but it was the first time I'd ever felt intentionally excluded. I shifted my gaze back and forth between the two of them, both of them deliberately not looking at me.

"What?" I said foolishly.

They watched each other carefully. I could feel Peter's dread building up in the back of his mind, and I stared at him when I realized he was deliberately trying to bury it.

I leaned over toward him and after a moment Peter opened his eyes and looked at me. His face was filled with so much regret it neared pity, and I almost groaned in anticipation of whatever horror he was about to tell me.

"Peter," I prodded, "what is it?'

Peter took a deep breath and his eyes met mine, so clear and candid I blinked in surprise. "Walter is saying—," I watched his Adam's Apple bob as he swallowed, forcing himself to look me in the eye. "Walter is saying that your abilities—that somehow I—um—activate them—" The last word was so low by the time he got to it I had to strain to hear them. He dropped his eyes and looked away from me.

"And Peter allows you to manage them as well." Walter added excitedly. "You see, I began to notice after the fire in the lab that you were less likely to involuntarily set things on fire when Peter was around. Almost as if his presence helped you control your abilities."

Walter paused to take another noisy slurp of coffee and then continued, "I wasn't sure of course. Which is why, when we did the experiments in the lab, all of which failed I might add, I insisted that Peter not be present. I wanted to test and see if you would be able to reach your potential without Peter." Walter smiled smugly again.

Peter was still staring across the room, studying the kitchen sink like he might find some comfort etched into the ceramic.

"Until the doll," he said quietly.

"Imagine my surprise and delight," Walter added, "When I confirmed that Peter's presence—being near you physically—was the key to controlling your abilities."

He smiled, satisfied with himself at having solved the problem of my abilities so very simply and my mouth tightened with irritation at his pleased delight at his conclusions.

"You see, Olivia," Walter leaned closer to me in his excitement, "Peter," he emphasized Peter's name excitedly, punctuating the syllables with a downward jab of his hand, "is the reason you are able to control your abilities. I believe Miriam was able to give you access somehow, lead you to wherever it was your pyrokinetic abilities were locked away in your consciousness. Once they were unleashed, they wreaked havoc with your consciousness which is why you needed to sleep for several days. You had no way of controlling those new abilities"

Walter was excited now, chugging along the track of his own logic, utterly incapable of sensing anyone else's feelings. "But Peter somehow was able to—without realizing it, which is fascinating—he was able to provide you with some measure of control over those abilities. I've imagined this was what was happening for a while, of course, but I was able to prove it that day in the lab when you lit the doll on fire."

Walter sat back in his chair, thrilled to have his hypothesis proven. "You see, Olivia? Just like Peter with the machine, your abilities seem to be encoded somehow in your response to him. Without him, I suspect that the fire, even the empathic abilities, would fade away. It's fascinating, really. The abilities are super-human, but it's your connection with Peter that allows you to realize them."

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Peter's face go blank in his Everything's-Gone-To-Shit look a half-second after I felt his mind wipe clean. With him working that hard, I'd have to devote a lot of unavailable resources to figure out what he was really feeling, assuming I had the energy to try in the first place, that is.

Walter was on a roll now, and nothing short of me actually setting something on fire would stop him. I briefly fantasized about setting him on fire, then fearfully put the thought from my mind. I still couldn't depend on having any control of my abilities, Peter or no, and even though I might derive personal satisfaction from shutting Walter up permanently, I reflected grimly that his skill-set would be most likely required for what Peter and I had to do in the future.

Not that I even could set him on fire alone I thought bitterly, even as the idea occurred to me. Not without Peter to guide me and hold my hand.

Walter was still talking, "We've known for a while, my dear, that heightened emotions gives you better access to your abilities. And I've mentioned to you before that the way you transform your fear to anger makes you very good at your job, but I'd never suspected that the very same anger would block your abilities. But, see, Peter helps you direct those abilities, makes them manageable. Useful, even—" Walter nodded, satisfied with himself.

"Walter—" Peter warned, glancing at me sideways.

"I don't think so," I told Walter, tightly controlling some emotion I couldn't categorize right then. It's not like I ever asked for my abilities. Walter had forced them on me when I'd been too young and powerless to protect myself. I didn't like them or want them, but that never stopped me from feeling irrationally proud that I was the only person who'd been dosed with Cortexiphan who was still marginally functional. It had always made me secretly believe I was special somehow —that something inherent made me more capable, more receptive to those abilities.

To suddenly learn that those abilities weren't really mine at all, but somehow only were usable through Peter was a blow more upsetting than I anticipated. Add to that the implication—still unspoken, but assumed by everyone involved—that when Peter went to his death in the machine I'd be required to help him achieve it, and you could say the last twenty-four hours of my life were exceptionally crappy, even grading on the Dunham-curve.

Walter was staring off into space, giddily calculating all the fun we would have while he tried to decide which psychic game we'd be playing with first.

I leaned toward Walter with frustrated intent, feeling Peter's alarm spike, partly through our connection and partly through the tension spreading through his body as Walter blithely went on muttering about my abilities.

Peter's face was decidedly, exceptionally blank and I tried not to dwell on how much the smooth lines of it resembled the Observer we'd been conversing with about twelve hours previously, even though it now felt like months ago. He knew I was feeling helpless and useless and utterly filled with despair, which made me dangerous and it's probably why he'd mentally removed himself from the line of fire.

Suddenly Walter's one-track mind screeched to a halt on its tracks. He sucked in a breath and looked at me.

"How far does this go, Olivia?" Walter asked softly. But I wasn't fooled by his tone. His eyes narrowed, a hard and flinted blue before he shot out rapid-fast. "Was it like this with Nick? Can you get inside his head like you can Peter's? Predict what he is going to do next? Hear his thoughts halfway between the forming and the thinking? Need his body near yours to keep you

together? To calm you down?"

Peter gasped and jerked his head toward me in surprise.

Shit.

I looked over Walter's shoulder, trying to figure out how to un-spill all the hot-blood of my secrets from the table.

Walter's eyebrows raised in both surprise and enthusiasm. Some kind of dark delight lit his face from the inside.

They both stared at me. Peter in shock and Walter so arrogantly that, with a flash of insight, I realized Peter had come by that look genetically.

I'd assumed neither of them had even half a clue of the extent of my abilities. I'd never even hinted at anything other than the fire, which they already knew about, since I'd only begun to realize a number of them myself, and I'd certainly never let on that they seemed to grow stronger every day. Stronger with Peter always nearby, the voice in my head whispered, but I wrapped my hands around its neck and squeezed until it lapsed into choked silence.

But obviously Walter had figured it out. Walter might be crazy, but he wasn't stupid, and he watched both Peter and I with a kind of rabid intensity that made Travis Bickle look like a dilettante.

"I, I—" I stuttered to Walter, "This is—" But I only embarrassed myself further when the outright tremble in my voice made finishing the sentence impossible. I'm not sure what I was going to say next—there weren't any words to describe what the problem was.

"Just, no. Okay?" I finally managed, each word an effort. I shook my head, thoroughly disgusted with the pleading note I heard in my own voice.

I scraped the chair back and stood looking down at both of them where they sat very still at the kitchen table staring at me.

And then I fled.

As I was exiting the kitchen I heard Walter's confused sputtering in the direction of Peter. The last thing I heard as I passed through the kitchen door before I stomped off was Walter's high-pitched whine, the gist of which I missed, and Peter answering. "How did you expect her to react Walter?" his voice sounding weary.

The fact that he knew exactly what the problem was didn't comfort me as much as I'd hoped.

The biggest joke of all was that I didn't have anywhere to go, I realized miserably. My apartment wasn't home anymore for all the fiscally irresponsible measures I took to maintain my lease. Rachel lived too far away now, and it wasn't like I had any actual friends. Of course, even if I had friends, it's not like these kind of problems could be explained coherently or to someone with a security clearance any lower than the President.

Since I had nowhere else to go I went to Peter's room, though the idea practically choked me with bitterness. Peter's room was only just beginning to feel like a place that partially belonged to me anyway, and that was only because I increasingly felt like he belonged to me, so his things were mine by extension. The realization only made me feel worse.

I sat on the bed and stared at my hands.

I wasn't upset with Peter. In fact, given the way my abilities worked, just about the only thing keeping me from taking a dive off the nearest cliff these last few years was the fact that it was him. It wasn't something I ever advertised, but had it been anyone else, I'd have probably slit both our throats and ended the abuse once and for all.

But there was so precious little left of me that was my own. How could I not value, however begrudgingly, the one thing left that felt like it belonged to me? When there was so little left of my own after the enforced-colonization of the Other Olivia and being damned near overcome with Peter's mind and emotions every hour of every day. For better or worse, mostly worse, I'd always imagined that my abilities, unwelcome though they were, were the only thing left that still belonged to me.

And that didn't even begin to touch on how bewildered, how miserable I was at the prospect of Peter actually getting in the machine. Of me having to help him do so. Of having to watch him die there—or probably something even more God-awful.

I almost laughed. Well, the omnipotent being orchestrating my life might be a mean son of a bitch, but at least he/she/it was consistent. You'd have thought I'd have seen it coming; and yet still, somehow, learning I could only realize my own abilities through Peter—that those abilities and our connection would directly bring about his demise—had been a blow I hadn't been expecting.

I guess in the future that would teach me to pay closer attention to the foreshadowing.

Walter had rightly guessed I'd taken to crawling inside Peter's mind. I rarely permitted myself that luxury, but I did do it; much more that I should, and far oftener than I let on. Peter knew I could of course, but I imagined that he thought I only did it when he was aware of it. I had no reasonable excuse for doing so covertly or as frequently as I did. But, as absolutely insane as it sounded, sometimes it felt like the only way I could find myself was to trace me back through Peter. How could I ask permission for such a thing? Or explain it to him when I didn't understand it myself?

Everything in Peter's mind made me feel better. The ticking of his logic, the hum of his compassion, the glow of affection when we were close. Peter was so . . . _content_. Things bothered him—a lot of them—there was always worry, the anxiety that he'd miss something and someone would die, the fear of losing what he loved: Walter, me, the life we had full of meaningful action, but it was always on the surface and never seemed to infiltrate a deep placidity that he didn't even seem to recognize about himself.

But the things I encountered in his mind always made me ashamed, even when I allowed myself the luxury of basking in it briefly, letting it wash over me like a balm. It wasn't just the violation of his privacy, which was bad enough, but knowing he felt that way confirmed that there was indeed something wrong with me. Something that made it difficult, if not impossible, for me to feel any kind of real sympathy, for myself or anyone else.

I'd always imagined my faults were the result my childhood, laid the responsibility for my emotional inadequacies at my stepfather's door, but I knew Peter's childhood wasn't any better. Walter had conducted tests on him outright, to say nothing about his more comprehensive betrayals. Peter had it worse, and he'd turned out better. He was more compassionate—the fact that he'd put up with me as long as he had was proof enough of that—so I knew the problem hadn't originated with my experiences, but with me. I might fight for justice with a determination that made most people fear and dislike me, but I had never felt the kind of ease, the contentment, that I experienced inside Peter—I'd not have believed it was possible to feel that way otherwise. It was the only place I'd ever found it, so part of the reason I kept prying, kept coming back, was to experience it vicariously and maybe even steal a little of it for myself.

Knowing that about myself was one thing, but having Walter spill that knowledge out across the pitted kitchen table to be discussed in the open was another matter entirely, and I don't think I've ever felt so deeply ashamed of myself before now.

I stared down at my hands again and waited for Peter to come up and try to make me feel better.


	15. Chapter 15

**Sum Over Histories: Chapter 15**

_**A/N**__: I warned you it may be fair while before I posted again. The story is still going strong, writing-wise, just at my normal molasses-in-January pace. If you are worried I won't finish, don't, because I am waaaay to anal-retentive not to (it's part of my charm, you see). The kind reviews, PM's, and encouragement from readers I've received help me over writing-humps as well._

_Kudos to my beta, starg8fans, who totally rocks!_

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><p>After she fled the kitchen, I waited an hour for Olivia to calm down a little on her own. Each passing minute cheered me more than I had any reason to be that we hadn't yet had to a) call the fire department or b) call the cab company because Olivia decided to skip town for good.<p>

Walter was only marginally fazed by Olivia's abrupt departure. He and I sat at the table while I half-listened as he prognosticated possibilities the new awareness of my role in Olivia's abilities opened up.

"Peter?" Walter called, his voice volume up past his normal boom.

"Huh?" I said, a little louder than necessary. I realized I hadn't been listening to him at all. Walter caught me casually easing my left elbow off the table to get a little relief for my throbbing shoulder. Sadly for me, opiates didn't really mix well with decisions about how to prevent the end of the world.

Walter's face softened. "You understand what Olivia must do? For her to stop time so you can get into the machine will take an enormous amount of energy. Far, far more, I believe, than will be generated by you inside the machine."

I sighed and studied the paint on the opposite wall as if it were the most interesting thing I'd ever seen. "I know, Walter." I pulled my elbow against my side and rested my forehead in my right palm. "It's probably not even possible."

Walter's voice was quiet when he asked, "And if it is?"

When I didn't say anything, Walter said, "It will most likely kill Olivia. She's strong, she always has been, but no one would be able to survive that."

It's not like I needed Walter to verbalize what I'd already realized. "She'll do it anyway," I said, like either of us needed reminding.

"So will you," Walter said, his voice cracking just a little.

Walter dipped his head and stared at the table. Then he said quietly, "I— Peter, the thought of losing you both is so dreadful I can't even—."

He paused, raised his head, and looked at me, then turned and leaned so he could rest both his hands on my right one. "I—I couldn't let you go before, and look at what my selfishness has done."

He held up his hand to cut off my immediate, knee-jerk protests.

"No, Peter, it's true and you know it. It doesn't matter what my intentions were. I paved this hell-bound road myself and I—," He dropped his eyes to where our hands were touching and lifted his shoulders slightly, "I want you to at least know I won't make the same mistake again."

I rotated my hand and curled my fingers around his. Honestly, it never even crossed my mind that Walter would try to sabotage whatever plan we came up with in order to save me again. I knew Walter loved me—probably more than was healthy for either of us—but he'd brought about the destruction of the universes once to prevent my death. I knew he wouldn't try to do it again. These last three years of living with Walter had given me new perspective on his eccentric vision. He'd do what he could to change having to give me up, but when the time came, he'd not interfere with what he now believed to be necessary.

A number of minutes passed while Walter and I sat silently, lost in our own thoughts before Walter finally pulled his hand away from mine and patted it. His nod was a series of tiny chin jerks that signaled he'd reached a private resolution and then he said, "Peter. I'll need to know which direction you want to take this. So I can do my part."

When I raised my eyes to his face I suddenly noticed how old and feeble his sloped shoulders and deep-lined face made him look.

"I have to talk to Olivia first," I told him, "I can't make this decision on my own."

He nodded in agreement but his eyes were far away.

"Although," Walter mused a minute later, as usual completely incapable of keeping his opinions to himself, "Don't you think, all other things being equal, that wholeness and unity is better than separation?"

I watched his face, unsure what he was driving at.

"Elizabeth wanted you to separate the worlds," he went on, "Cassandra and the Observer believe you should join them. I mean, given what we know about the similarity of the two worlds, about the relationship between Olivia's abilities and your own, don't you think uniting them would be better than separating them?"

I studied the leftover sludge at the bottom of my coffee cup considering if what Walter was saying made any sense.

I wasn't sure. I shook my head and chuckled darkly. "You think the universe understands metaphor, Walter?" I asked him, but the question didn't come our half as glib as I intended.

Walter smiled at me and said, "I think that nature always borrows meanings from one context, and revises it so it applies to another—otherwise, what have we been doing for the last three years? Life itself depends on the congress of the dissimilar. If nothing else, the laws of science understands that the transfer of the alien to the familiar can make them both intelligible."

He looked pointedly at Olivia's empty seat and nodded. "How can the universe not understand metaphor when it is always showing us how one thing can only define itself against the presence of the other."

I took a deep breath, trying to dig through the Walterisms to something useful beneath them. With Walter, quixotic delusion more often than not masqueraded as science, and he saw nothing wrong with freely debauching the laws of physics and nature for his own personal philosophy.

Still, that didn't mean he wasn't right and it was no less plausible as any of the other ideas we routinely entertained. Maybe Walter had a point and it _was_ better to bring the worlds together than to try and extricate them. I wasn't sure the universe understood a metaphor, but it did have a tendency to repeat itself, to emphasize significant points in crucial moments. So maybe the fact that Olivia had special access to my mind and I (theoretically) had access to hers actually did mean that we were supposed to find a way for the worlds to interlink and overlap.

I stared at Olivia's empty chair and cold coffee. Of course, if merging the universes down to every subatomic particle went the way of things at the moment, then we didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of even getting within spitting-distance of merging the worlds before they both imploded. If our current relationship was anything to go by, we'd be better off just crafting our tinfoil hats to usher in the end and be done with it.

When an hour had passed, I reasoned it was more than enough time for Olivia's anger to have reduced from a rolling boil to a simmer. I scraped my chair back and headed toward the bedroom.

I winced as I hobbled up the stairs. Moving to a multi-level home showed a sizable lack of foresight on my part considering how often our work left me or one of the people near to me injured in some capacity.

Just outside the bedroom door I paused, took a deep breath, and then opened the door.

Olivia was sitting on the edge of the bed staring at her hands resting in her lap. I hovered in the doorway and leaned my shoulder on the doorjamb, doing my best to keep an (emotionally and physically) safe distance between us.

She looked very, very small perched, shoulders slumped, on the edge of my bed in the middle of my empty room. I wasn't fooled though. Like tsunamis and objects viewed from space, Olivia is a good deal larger and more hazardous than she first appears. When she didn't look at me or say anything I asked, "Can I come in?"

She laughed, and it was a bitter sound. "Why not?" she said, "The room's yours."

I didn't contradict her as I walked to stand halfway between the door and the side of the bed to lean against the wall. I wanted to take all her problems away. It was a foolish thought, but I couldn't help myself. It's well-established I'm a monumental fool when it comes to Olivia.

I crossed the remaining distance that separated us and crouched down next to her, prying open her legs so I could kneel between them, resting my hands on the bed next to her hips.

"I know it's not your fault," she said. She sounded like she meant it.

I was a little surprised she'd gotten there this fast. I knew it wasn't my fault she could only control her abilities with me there to hold her hand, but the knowledge sure as hell didn't make me feel any less like responsible, or any less like shit. If our situations had been reversed I wasn't sure I'd be coming forward with the comforting words for _her_ at this particular moment.

When I didn't say anything she added, "I know I'm being childish, but—" She threw her hands up into the air in frustration, "—don't I get anything that's just mine?"

Really, I could kill Walter for piling this on her like this. The explanation would have never gone well, but maybe if I'd had some control over how he told her . . .

"It wouldn't have mattered," she said, and I felt a chill go up my spine. I knew she snuck in sometimes when she thought I wasn't paying attention, but I really hoped she wasn't going to start doing that regularly. Even if the universe did understand, we lived enough literalized metaphors around here as it was.

Also, it was unsettling as fuck.

She smiled a little and leaned closer to me, resting her forehead against mine, curling her arms around my neck to drape down my back, and I almost died of shock right there. It was so unlike Olivia to reach out for comfort of any kind, let alone physical comfort, that several beats passed before I overcame my surprise enough to lean into her and wrap my arms around her middle.

It was so strange to consider. A little embarrassing even. I'm not sure we ever hugged like this before. Olivia wasn't ever comfortable with physical affection. Not when I first met her and not now. At least, not the kind that didn't end up with her naked and bouncing up and down astride my hips, which she clearly had compartmentalized as something other than affection.

I turned my head so it slid past her face and onto her shoulder, gathering her closer to me. It was my instinct to connect through physical contact—at least when I was really sincere like I was most of the time anyway with Walter and Olivia. Mom taught me that, I guess. Knowing what I know now, I can understand why Mom probably felt like she couldn't communicate with me any other way.

With Olivia I'd long ago learned to stamp out the impulse as best I could so she'd not feel overwhelmed with something she'd be uncomfortable accepting and couldn't return. But it still made me feel a little foolish. The fact that a simple hug, just our arms around each other, felt so novel, so awkward with her.

I tightened my arms around Olivia as the thought occurred to me and I was pleased to feel her respond. She slid her arms from around my neck to underneath my arms and pushed her cheek a little harder against mine.

"I can feel you," I told her, my lips moving in the space underneath her ear. "Why are you so ashamed?"

"Sorry," she said, taking a deep breath and I felt her pull herself together somewhat and recede.

"You don't have to stop," I said. "I can't tell anything specific," I reassured her. "Just the feelings."

A bubble of nervous laughter rolled up from inside her chest. "So, let me get this straight, you're trying to preserve _my_ privacy?"

I looked up at her. "Don't do that," I begged her. "I don't know exactly what's going on Olivia, but I can feel you beating yourself up. That's a lot of punishment for one person. And I don't think we can get you fitted for a hair-shirt this late in the game."

If this was all about her trawling around unattended in my head, she needed to know that it didn't exactly make the list of my concerns right now. Probably Olivia's least attractive quality is the way she insists in taking responsibility for just about everything that happens around her without even checking with someone else first to find out if the misery she was causing herself was worth the trouble.

She pulled back from me a little and moved her arms from around my chest so we were face to face, but not looking at each other.

"So now what?" she said wearily.

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><p>Break. Break. Break.<p>

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><p>Peter groaned and winced at his what must be now-aching knees. "Move to Bora Bora?" he suggested hopefully, after he moved from between my open knees, rocked back on his feet and stood.<p>

I stood too, moving over to the window and peering at the grey tundra outside. The street was empty and silent, and I couldn't tell if it was because everyone had already gone off to work or because it was a weekend and everyone sensible was still sleeping.

I had no idea what day it was. I'd have been hard-pressed to guess at the month. February, maybe? I couldn't help but think wistfully that it didn't matter what day it was in Bora Bora.

When I didn't say anything for several long minutes, Peter asked, "Are you actually considering it?" his voice breathless, maybe even slightly hopeful.

I turned and looked at him from underneath my eyelashes. "Aren't you?"

Peter just stared at me. "Well," he flustered, "Well, yeah, but I'm always thinking about it, truthfully. I didn't think _you_ ever did though."

I smiled at him "I wish I was somewhere, anywhere, any_one_ else, every day of my life."

When he just shrugged at me, I added, "But we can't."

He moved to stand at the opposite side of the windowsill so he was facing me and asked, "What are our options?"

I ticked them off on my fingers as I went. "Well, number one: You stay here. Get into the machine. I do some unknown, unsubstantiated juju to ensure you live long enough to reunite the worlds somehow. You probably die." I glanced at him.

Peter just watched me, listening, and I went on, "Second verse, same as the first: except you split the worlds."

Peter raised his eyebrows at me. "Same ending?"

"Same ending." He rested his shoulder on the edge of the window and blew a breath out between his teeth.

I soldiered on. "Three: You go back to the Other Side." I swallowed, "Give—give yourself to The Secretary," I said, inwardly clawing at the tremor I couldn't quite manage to strip from my voice, "Get into the machine Over There, join or split the worlds either one. Same ending."

"I want to make this clear," I hurried on, wanting to get this out of the way. "If you go Over There, you do it alone. I'm never going back there. Not of my own free will."

"Not even if I need you?" he asked, his eyes widening with surprise.

"Not even to save the worlds," I replied, looking him straight in the eye.

Peter leaned away from me a little at my statement. He probably assumed no line existed that I wouldn't cross. Not once I got started anyway.

And that was mostly true. But not in this instance. And I really hoped Peter wouldn't ask it of me because I wasn't sure I'd be able to tell him no. When it comes down to it, there's very little I wouldn't do for Peter if he asked me, probably because he almost never does.

He searched my face for a long moment than nodded slowly. "Okay," he agreed. "So we know where we stand on that."

I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding, happier than I really had any reason to be that Peter used the plural pronoun.

Peter merely tilted his head at me, watching. "Is there an option where I don't die?"

I shook my head at him, "Not really."

"But if I go Over There," he looked at me, "Alone—then there's a better chance _you_ won't die."

I jerked my head up at him just in time to see him move, suddenly and precisely. There was only a step between us, but Peter crossed it in an instant. Then he was in my space, crowding like he always does, hemming me in with his body. He hunched his shoulders down so our faces were level.

"No," I said, the one word making Peter lean closer to me, the lines in his face deepening.

He looked like he was going to say something, but was trying to figure out how to best string the words together so I wouldn't object.

I fought the almost overwhelming impulse to put my hand to the center of his chest, unsure if I was trying to wrestle some space for myself or to reassure myself that he was actually still here.

He was so close I could see the rhythmic rise of his chest and feel the shallow drafts of air against my face when he exhaled; I could practically feel the reverberating thump of his heartbeat in his chest. My breath caught in my throat—he felt so physically tangible, so damned _real_. Between the unrelenting glimmer, his spectral appearance to me on the Other Side and his Olympian significance in the unfolding events of the imminent Apocalypse, Peter almost never feels real to me. I've never been completely confident he's not a figment of my imagination, invented, just as he is, because he's something I clearly need.

I was still tolerably certain that Peter couldn't overhear me the way I could him, but you wouldn't have known it by the way he slid so he was standing behind me, wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me back so I was flush against his chest. He rested his chin on my shoulder, completely enveloping me with his body, like the drama of his physical presence might better convince me. It was both a comfort and affirmation.

I let myself lean back a little into him. "What does Walter think?" I asked, not even trying to hide the change in subject.

He shifted his arms so they were on top of mine, pulled me a little closer and said, "Well, Walter thinks—that is, he'd like to believe that unity—wholeness—is better than separation."

I just stood there for a minute trying to puzzle through his non-explanation. Walter was sometimes inclined to speak in bizarre metaphors that I understood even less than the science-babble that usually streamed from his mouth with the force and dominance of a levee breach. But Peter always seemed to instinctively follow the overgrown byways of Walter's mind. Most of the time it was incredibly endearing when they spoke their own private language no one else understood; it offered concrete proof of their regard for one another, which was quite easy to miss if you didn't know where to look in the spaces between them.

They may not agree on much of anything, but Peter and Walter's minds were incredibly alike sometimes, though I'd never tell Peter that. Not unless I _wanted_ to piss him off.

"Walter thinks you should put the worlds back together," I said. It wasn't a question.

Peter paused a long time, like he was testing and then rejecting each word he was going to say. As each moment passed I could feel him growing tenser and tenser.

Several minutes passed and then he finally said, "Walter thinks that there is a connection between your abilities, our connection and the destiny of the two universes. Metaphorically speaking—I mean. That is, Walter believes that—,"

He sighed and shifted a little uncomfortably against me, "He believes that all these things—the universes, your abilities, our connection, that they all kind of belong together. Or, um, realize one another in some way."

"You know how crazy that sounds? Right?" I asked him. Just because I didn't understand most of what poured out of Walter's mouth didn't mean I couldn't identify the crazy.

"Uh-huh," he agreed, relaxing a little against me for some reason I couldn't identify. "Doesn't mean it isn't true."

"And you?" I said, "Do you think this too?

"I told you once before, I have to believe there's another way."

When I didn't say anything I felt him shrug his shoulders against my back and said, "Of course, that wasn't you, so it probably doesn't count." His tone was deceptively light. Only I could hear the undercurrent of revulsion in his voice.

He shifted his feet, pulling me a little closer and said, "So, I'll say it again. I have to believe there's another way. And I think you and Walter and I are the only ones who might be able to find it. Maybe he already has."

That made no more sense to me than anything else that had happened in the last 24 hours. But I _did_ understand that Peter believed we should make our own way. That's what we'd always done before, and it seemed to have more or less worked this far. We had to at least try. If it worked, it wouldn't be the first impossible thing he, Walter, Astrid, and I had pulled off. And if it didn't work, well, anyone left standing at the end could comfort themselves with the fact that at least we all fought the good fight.

I curled my arms onto his where they were circling my waist, and cupped his elbows with my hands. When he felt the gesture, he nuzzled his scratchy cheek against my neck and said, "So, then, what do you think? Do you want to try? To change things and make the world that we want?"

Peter pressed his parted lips to the side of my neck, nuzzling me with his nose, touching the tip of his tongue to my skin. He only does it on occasions when he believes me to be distracted with other things, but he has a habit of burying his face in my neck and breathing me in that's almost feral, like he wanted to inhale me whole and make me a permanent part of him.

I leaned back into him. "Yes," I said.

He pulled his mouth away and I felt a little shiver run through his body where it was still pressed close to mine. "Mmm," he hummed in general approval.

Peter swiveled me around to face him by letting go with one arm and pulling me toward him with the other. He held my face in his palms, thumbs resting just under my eyes, stroking slowly back and forth for a few minutes before he leaned in and kissed me.

It was the strangest kiss. Well, strange for us anyway. Our mouths met unhurriedly, almost tentatively, and then moved against each other with real curiosity, like everything we might need to know about each other could be funneled through our lips and measured by the way they widened and narrowed the space between us again and again.

I raised up on my tiptoes so I could put my arms around him a little more easily and slowly threaded one hand through the hair on the back of his neck. He responded by sliding his hands down my torso to enclose my ribcage. Neither one of us deepened the kiss—not with our mouths and not with the rest of our bodies.

As our mouths pursued and unmasked each other it felt like we were learning about each other all over again, though I don't recall doing it the first time. It felt like Peter had always been here—right here next to me, close enough to touch, with his hands harboring my body like an ally and his mouth slanting languidly against mine—that we'd always been just like we were at this moment and had never handled each other with anything other than this lenient grace or communicated with anything less than this unhurried concern.

_Comfortable_, I realized a little dazedly several moments later when we'd pulled away from each other but, for no reason I could have ever explained, I stayed on the tips of my toes to keep my face close enough to his that they were near-touching.

We were comfortable together.

I looked up at Peter, noting that even he looked a little surprised at this new thing that seemed to have unfurled and bloomed between us from nowhere. It was the first time I think we kissed without it being a preface to sex or a post-script to doom and carnage.

I thought a little light-headedly that, just like Peter himself, this was something I could get used to easily.

Very used to.

* * *

><p>Break. Break. Break.<p>

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><p>Walter gave Olivia and me the drugs on a Friday night. He insisted that it wasn't just his own perversion or lack of life that made such a schedule necessary, but that we would do better if we were both tired after a long work-week. I wanted to suggest that we're both the most tired after a big fat orgasm, but I didn't think Olivia would appreciate my input in the matter.<p>

Yes, I caved on my No-Walter-Experiments stance. After the meeting with the Trifecta of Evil (Cassandra, the Observer, Elizabeth), all of whom were as much in the dark about what needed to happen to repair the worlds as we were, I decided to put my money on Walter and his crazy schemes, although it wasn't exactly reassuring that Walter was the only one going two for two in this scenario, having been right about my role in the machine and the influence of the connection between Olivia and me.

Walter speculated that Olivia and I needed to understand our connection and be able to access it seamlessly in order to use it at will. Predictably, Walter believed that the best way for us to discover and practice this was with the administration of boatloads of psychotropic drugs.

Because I insisted that we needed _someone_ involved in Walter's lunatic plan who could legally claim sanity in a court of law, I did my very best to persuade Astrid that this was something she didn't want to miss. I was aware that pushing psychotropics into our veins to help Walter prepare Olivia and I to bring an end to the world as we know it was above and beyond the call of duty by any yardstick, even Astrid's, but the prospect of leaving Walter alone in the lab while Olivia and me were prone and drugged terrified me far more than any mysterious machine ever could.

When Astrid just stared unblinking and unmoved by my attempts to gild this degenerate lily, I realized that I must be slipping. Whatever it was that used to make me adept at getting what I wanted out of people well-enough that I could make a better-than-average living out of it must have vanished.

Maybe Olivia removed it when we were sleeping.

If I'm anything I'm adaptable, so when persuasion proved to be a nonstarter, I tried bribery. I promised Astrid a bonus and an all-expenses paid trip to a place of her and Shannon's choice (and a Walter-less week off to go along with it) after we saved the world. Shit, I had the money, and it wasn't like I was going to be around much longer to spend it. The fruit I had shipped in from around the world regularly to ensure that Olivia achieved at last half her daily calorie intake didn't even make the tiniest dent in my bank account(s) because about three minutes after William Bell willed everything to him, Walter signed it all over to me. He didn't want the money, he'd said. He never did. Walter only wanted the resources, the access to the science. "You take care of it, Peter," he'd said waving a vague hand my direction, like accepting a multi-billion dollar corporation was something I did as a favor to him and not the other way around.

Being in charge of Massive Dynamic, even just on paper, would be nothing but an irritation to Walter who still struggled to take care of his day-to-day living; it would have only got in the way of what he really wanted to do. So one afternoon after I presented myself in her cold, polished office, Nina wiggled her nose and made a cache of legal minions appear. Under her benignant and watchful eye, I listened as they tripped over each other to make clear that they were poised to accomplish my every fiscal whim, not bothering to smother the grin that made my cheeks ache as I signed stack after stack of papers in triplicate, thinking,_ if only they knew_.

It was simple, really. Nina did all the dirty work, both literally and figuratively, so all I did was watch as comically large deposits appeared quarterly in my account (and that was _after_ half was siphoned off and deposited in a trust for Walter with Olivia as primary trustee). I also had the displeasure of seeing my real name in print for the first time ever: one notch above Bill Gates on the Forbes Wealthiest Billionaires of the Year list, a dishonor Olivia gleefully taunted me with by tearing the page out of an actual print copy of the magazine (where she got it I'll never know, neither of us had much occasion to thumb magazines), circling my name in red, and hanging it on the refrigerator at home. "I had no idea I was sleeping with a billionaire," she'd said, scrunching her nose in that disapproving way of hers, "Why am I still drinking 12 year-old scotch?"

But when neither the Bishop charm nor the money and promises of time off tempted Astrid, I did the only thing I had left at my disposal.

I begged.

The second Astrid's face softened I realized I should have started there, and that's how I knew I really _was_ slipping. Astrid is about as kindhearted as they come, and I'm not ashamed to admit I was more than a little pathetic.

"And a _two_-week trip," she amended once she agreed, her eyes glinting a little with avarice, "All at once. And we want to go to Hawaii."

"Done," I promised, and Astrid blinked at me, clearly surprised that I'd rolled over so easily.

In the week or so that had elapsed since Olivia and I had met the Trifecta at the hotel Walter had become convinced that the place Olivia had been visiting when she'd been in the Tank before, the place where the children had been kept after their abduction, where Olivia retrieved them from when she drug them back was somewhere not in this dimension—not in any dimension he speculated.

When I retorted that there _was_ no such place out of time—that no one, no place, no _thing_, can escape history, Walter rolled his eyes at me like I'd announced that Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy were here to take him on an all-expenses-paid trip to Neverland.

When I warned Walter lowly not to utter a syllable in protest of what he loved calling my "closed-mindedness" Olivia actually snickered from her spot across the room, so I stopped threatening Walter long enough to glare at her.

Olivia now followed Walter and his half-baked plans with the kind of fervor the terminally ill show a faith healer. Between the two of them, my objections were brushed aside until I was doing little more than sputtering and huffing at them wordlessly.

Olivia showed up a little after six the following Friday. Walter had said the experiment might take all night, so she went home to change out of her work clothes while I stayed in the lab to help Walter prepare the test.

It was already dark, but Walter dimmed the lights in the lab and put on some New-Agey type music, supposedly to help us relax, tempting me to point out the benefits of orgasm again, though the frigid lab with Walter and Astrid staring at us was hardly the place for such activities. Olivia's lips twisted darkly when she shot Walter _the_ look after she stepped through the doors.

"No incense, Walter?" she said.

"I can go get some if you think it would help with the mood," Astrid offered, although there was hint of laughter in her voice and she looked at Olivia when she said it.

Olivia watched Astrid stretch onto her toes to hang the twin IV bags onto their poles on the opposite sides of two adjacent recliners Walter had insisted on, and I'd procured that afternoon, much to my irritation. She advanced into the lab, finally noticing me half-undressed and shivering, perched on a stool on the other side of the lab.

Her eyes narrowed and she looked back at Walter. "I thought we weren't going into the tank," she said, her eyes flicking over my naked chest and feet and my unbuttoned jeans.

Walter was busy on the lab table, filling syringes with the pharmaceuticals he'd personally designed and manufactured that afternoon.

"No, no, my dear, you're not," Walter said absently as he studied the procedures and rechecked his formula.

"We just need access to your torso and lower extremities to place the electrodes before you sit down in the chairs," Astrid explained as she moved to stand in front of me and began untangling the wires, nudging my wrist with an elbow so I'd hold out my hands and give her somewhere to rest the pile.

Olivia nodded and shrugged off her jacket, throwing it on top of the pile by the door. I had to look away as she dispassionately stripped in front of the three of us. The choking terror made it unlikely that I'd find much of anything sexy at the moment, but Olivia is always inspirational. The last thing I needed was to get a hard-on in front of my father and a colleague.

"You okay?" Astrid asked, frowning as she struggled with the wires.

"Are you just being polite, or do you want an actual answer?" I grumbled.

Astrid flashed me her toothy smile. "I was just being polite," she clarified right before she blobbed a glob of ice cold conductive gel on my chest just under my left nipple and suctioned me with the electrode.

She had the audacity to smile when I hissed at the cold goo and her colder hands.

The top of her hair tickled under my chin as she moved, slightly bent around me to place the rest of the electrodes. Astrid untangled wires as she went, her light hands careful to ensure that no tabs or cords interfered with the bandage covering the healing wound left arm. By the time she'd put the last on my chest under my armpit, Olivia was finished undressing and stood in her bra and underwear. I turned my head away and concentrated hard on Astrid's cold hands, now running through my scalp and placing the EEG probes on my head.

Astrid patted my shoulder. "You're done," she said, stepping around so she was in front of me. "Why don't you pick a chair?"

I sighed heavily and stood up while Astrid stretched to fiddle needlessly with one of the probes behind my ear.

She decided she was done fiddling and looked me in the eye. "It'll be okay," she tried to reassure me.

"Uh huh," I mock-agreed, raising my eyebrows at her. "Next time you want to hand out the comfort, it might help if you tried to keep the abject fear out of your voice," I advised.

"Well, Olivia's done this kind of thing lots of times, and she's fine," Astrid shrugged her shoulders.

I glanced over at Olivia who was standing next to Walter, calmly placing her own EKG electrodes from memory with her right hand, not even flinching when Walter started an IV in the back of her left hand.

"I don't think it's fair to compare _anyone_ to Olivia," I pointed out as I watched her. "Well, not a _human_ anyway," I added.

Astrid patted my hip as I walked away. "You're not as cute as you think you are when you're grouchy."

I just shook my head at her and headed for the chairs.

She followed me over to the burgundy recliner on the left and watched as I dropped my jeans and slid into the chair. I pulled the side-handle so the footrest popped up and propped my right hand up on armrest so Astrid could start the IV. Once I was poked and the tubing strung up, Astrid put the last two electrodes on my ankles and covered me with a fleece blanket, which didn't do much for the cold since it was too small to completely cover me, but at least made me feel a little less exposed.

By the time Olivia slid into the navy recliner next to me and Walter finished affixing her probes to her skull, I was shivering so much I had to concentrate hard to keep my teeth from chattering. When Walter turned his back on us to go back to fetch the drugs, Olivia reached across the space between the chairs and slid her warm hand down my arm until she found my fingers under the blanket and twined them with hers.

She kept them there even when Walter came back.

"This first thing is just to relax you," Walter said as he injected first Olivia's port and then mine.

Not even a few seconds passed and I was suddenly impossibly hot, Olivia's hand in mine instantly sweaty with some unnamed anxiety.

The last semi-normal bodily sensation I had was Olivia's thumb stroking the back of my hand.

Walter hadn't even injected us with the actual drugs before Olivia twitched a little next to me, her hand jerking before she gasped softly and yanked her hand away.

I saw Walter approach the recliners with his cocktail-filled syringe through filmy eyes, and then a second later, like someone lifted a gauzy veil from all around me, Olivia was everywhere—on me, inside me, coursing through me—she was the haze of a smoke-filled bar seeping through my skin. It was overwhelming; I couldn't breathe and I couldn't stop my body from jerking in response to the shift in consciousness. Whatever it was that was happening now made her colonization in bed a few weeks ago feel like utter humbug, a sideshow trick, a flash of misdirected hands to hide the Queen.

This was nothing like that. That had been disconcerting, sure, but with enough mental squinting it had also been somewhat pleasant, if for no other reason that I'd had an erection at the time. A curl of Olivia inside me, a delicate sense of comfort, maybe even humane possession if that was possible. It wasn't at all frightening.

This was violation. Assault. Nothing pleasant about it.

My stomach heaved and, if I'd been standing, I'd probably have fallen down.

Somewhere Walter was calling me and I felt Astrid's light hands on my scalp, adjusting the probes. Then, the anchor of all my sensory perception in this world dropped away and I was adrift somewhere else, the outlines of the setting indistinguishable, time suddenly intangible.

I could feel Olivia, still so thickly around me it felt like my throat was closing. It was the mental equivalent of anaphylaxis; my own identity receded into nothingness, my body fractured, forfeit, and left behind, the tattered doll tossed in the yard in the wake of natural disaster.

Instantly she was there—somehow both next to and inside of me and we were both alone in still silence and dark. When she held her hand out to me, my body was there too as if by magic, and I was able to slide my fingers into hers.

It was an understatement to note that I didn't trust looks at all anymore, but it sure _felt_ like her—the half-smile, the guarded eyes, the familiar way her fingers wound through mine—largely because at that moment she was the same as me. Being able to feel Olivia in my head was growing common enough these days, but her presence usually felt a little less stable and permanent.

"_How are you doing that?"_ I wondered. I wasn't speaking though something shifted in my chest in such a way I was certain she'd understood me.

"_Not sure,"_ she told me, as she tugged at my fingers, leading me through a dark corridor and into a dim, open space, "_but I'm here_."

When the space opened, I stepped in front of her, trying to get a better view at where we were, but all was still mostly dark and silence. Olivia let me take the lead—I'm not sure why—and we made our way across the empty, ill-lit space. An unseen hand guided me toward a faint, dispersed light that resembled the sun peeking over the horizon on a cloudy day. I headed mindlessly toward the light, Olivia following.

Olivia's consciousness was still swirling sickly inside, stifling me, but somehow I was able to shove her back somewhat and struggle through to a will of my own. I felt her anxiety at this development, but she didn't do anything about it and we moved on.

Suddenly, we were outside, the atmosphere lightening far too quickly around us for it to be natural, and though we weren't there yet, I could see in the distance ahead an opening that looked like it led somewhere—else. I shook my head, trying to get a handle on this un-place, this obvious lack of time. Any historian will tell you that without geography, a story cannot be told. That any history of the world is the story of a place. Einstein himself showed us how space and time are each a curved side of the other, a demonstration that put wormholes in Newton's apple forever. Einstein knew it. I knew it. There is no place outside of history and yet here we were, allegedly in that very spot, which, incidentally, now more closely resembled a dusty set from Star Trek the Original Series—the phony, red-tinged rocks, the dusty Southern Californiaesque atmosphere, the dead-silence of a sealed sound-stage—more than anything else.

Sheer, uncontrollable superstition compelled me to confirm that neither of us was wearing a red shirt.

"Olivia?" I slowed a little, just so I could feel her bump a little into my back.

This was unreal, even by my standards. I needed something sensual—to feel her body, to hear her voice—like Piglet trying to be sure of Pooh. I needed to know she was real, to feel the weight of her body fill the space alongside mine.

"Uh-huh," she said, stepping to the side where I could see her, now enveloped in blinding, golden light. Olivia obviously didn't feel the sensual lack I did. It was hardly reassuring that most of this is all in a day's work for Olivia.

The thought made me stretch so I could brush my shoulder against hers one last time before she stepped in front of me.

I would have like to have touched Olivia longer, listened to her more, but now wasn't really the time, so like I always did with Olivia: I made do with what I had and we moved on.


	16. Chapter 16

**Sum Over Histories: Chapter 16**

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><p><strong>Rating<strong>: M. Back in serious M territory this chapter.

**Disclaimer**: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.

Thanks to starg8fans for the beta.

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><p>"I fucking hate dream sequences," Peter said as we moved in measured steps around each other to check the front, side, and back of one another in the space we were moving through, trying to figure out where the hell it was we just landed.<p>

I couldn't tell when, or where, we were. It was all very different from anything I'd experienced in my mind before.

"_American Werewolf in London_?" I asked, letting Peter take point. I scanned the horizon of the bright-lit, sandy landscape, intuiting where he would move next, in what direction he would swivel, as we shuffled around each other and I checked his six in every direction.

"_Blade Runner_," he corrected, and his eyes kept moving around while the world around us seemed to shimmer and change with every glance. He muttered something about "megalomaniacal director's cut" as we shuffled forward and around each other.

"This isn't exactly a dream," I pointed out. "Dreams happen when you're asleep and I'm pretty sure we're awake in Walter's lab, even if we're drugged.

"Potato, Potahto," was all Peter said, as he swung around to check behind me as the light brightened and then dimmed.

There wasn't anything else to say after that, so I propped my weapon a little higher with a forearm under my elbow.

"You carry your gun with you in your dreams?" Peter asked, surprise taking a little of the decidedly-flat edge off his voice.

"Who says this is _my_ dream?" I asked. Our backs brushed against each other when I shrugged, "And, you know, some people have American Express . . ." I trailed off.

"And to think I ever doubted Freud," he observed.

The effects of Walter's drugs had been more overwhelming than I expected. He had barely administered what was supposed to "relax" us before I felt Peter filling me up—all of him at once—like wet sand dumped, thick and inexorable, into my mind. I was used to Peter's presence being at times unsettling, the chafe of too-tight clothes against sensitive skin. This invasion felt like my mind was splitting because there wasn't enough room inside for both of us.

Peter was leading me . . . somewhere. I couldn't place it, but his movements had an alert urgency about them. As if he subconsciously knew where he was going, not that such reasoning made much sense. I studied his back as he moved in front of me, disturbed by something I couldn't name, an unsteadiness in Peter's mind, maybe, though I couldn't quite pinpoint it. Evidently the process hadn't been very pleasant for him either.

Well, that couldn't be good. Dreaded though Peter's presence embedded in my psyche sometimes was, the steady, serene substance of his mind was the only emotional stability I had ever known. Somehow, it branded him _him_, and its sudden volatility rattled me in ways I didn't want to consider too intimately right now.

The painfully bright open space we were moving through gave way to a narrow, tight corridor that felt increasingly less open as we progressed down it. I shifted closer to Peter without realizing it and was really happy to feel him slow very slightly to allow the rhythmic nudge of my shoulder against his.

The corridor came to a sudden end at a door. Peter paused in front of it and looked at me. Just as if I had no will of my own, I nodded. As soon as I did, however, I felt thick, oily dread in anticipation of what lay behind it.

Peter opened the door anyway, cautiously stepping in front of me to shield me with his body as the hinges swung wide. Around the edges of Peter's torso I could see a small room filled with mismatched furniture, flooded with a yellow light that improbably issued from a couple of short, slightly dingy table lamps.

Peter stiffened in front of me and I palmed his waist, partly to soothe what I could feel was his already-churning emotions and partly to move him so I could see into the room better.

I was already anxious—my own anxiety had surely fed off of Peter's. That combined with his growing instability was more than a little discouraging. Peter might be outwardly cynical and short-tempered and he frequently runs at the mouth in the hyper-kinetic way of his like he's afraid he might die before he can get all the words out, but in spite of all that, at bottom Peter is about as emotionally steady and even-tempered as they come.

Something staggered at the base of my neck—the sickening snarl of a foundation shifting and parting from wire-mesh and steel beams. A flood of panic that skewered along my nerves and pooled at their tips.

Long habit forced me to control it when I started to shake.

When I leaned to peek around the solid wall of Peter's torso I could see two forms across the dark. A woman standing in the entryway to another room and a young man—a teenager—slumped on the couch with his shoulders tipped scornfully away from the woman.

I could hear Peter doing the mental equivalent of shrieking in his own head, though he stood frozen in front of me not making a sound. He was poised, one foot in front of the other, half-leaning in the room, unwilling to take a step forward, yet incapable of turning away.

The figures were moving—they seemed alive—but the heavy silence that surrounded all of us belied what appeared to be a one-sided argument the woman was having with the young man. They obviously couldn't see us, and the experience was much like it had been when I was re-living John's memories.

Something about the insolent slump of the young man's shoulders, the supercilious curl of his lips . . .

Oh shit.

I grabbed Peter's hand and his fingers moved reflexively, his grip so tight it nearly crushed the bones of my hand.

When I looked at him he was still standing there, staring at the scene in front of him.

I grew frustrated that I couldn't hear anything, and the instant I had the thought, like someone flipped a switch, the sound warbled to life, low at first, and then Dopplering to normal volumes a second later, though the woman's words remained distorted.

At the same moment, the woman stepped into the light and I didn't have to look at her now-illuminated face to see that it was Elizabeth Bishop. The one who raised Peter, that is. I guessed this not only because the teenaged Peter was folded stiff and arrogant on the couch, but also because of the frantic mop of black curls that darted wildly in all directions from the sides of her head. This was not the Elizabeth I knew from the Other Side, who was so cool, hard and bright she made me look like a pantsuit-wearing Mary Poppins. This woman was slumped and beaten, her face lined, her mouth pinched, her voice wrapped in notes of desperation as it pitched across the room to the young Peter.

I could hear the sounds of the words now, and the tone of Elizabeth's voice, but not the words themselves. I guessed that this was because it was Peter's experience, not mine, and so I was piggybacking on it, which was obviously not an entirely seamless process.

I looked up at Peter and his face was twisted with something close to agony, like I needed any bigger hints that this was something of which he was deeply ashamed. Also, I could tell by the frozen tension of his body that he _could_ hear the words—or maybe he was just remembering them—loud and clear by the look of torment that flared in his eyes.

I stepped around Peter to stand two-thirds of the way in front of him, putting him behind me, trying to get a better look. A second later Peter's arm snaked around my middle. He pulled me flush against him and I couldn't tell if he was trying to protect me or himself.

At the same moment the young man unfurled from the couch with improbable grace and slouched over to stand next to Elizabeth. He was tall—already towering over Elizabeth when he came to stand in front of her which was no surprise—but he was also older than I first guessed, maybe sixteen or seventeen. He leaned down a little closer to Elizabeth, speaking softly and leaning even closer as if he wanted to ensure she heard. I recognized his posture from the way the adult-Peter filled all the space around him, and then some.

I couldn't hear what he was saying, but Elizabeth's face, looking down and across the room away from young Peter's body, cracked and then crumpled. Her body remained frozen, even as the young man kept talking, hitching a little closer to her, invading her space just a little more.

I turned in Peter's arms so I could see his face—my Peter's face—which had tilted to follow the frozen motions of Elizabeth, now twisted in some unnamable violation.

Something was peeling away inside my mind, unwinding and separating with vicious brutality.

"_Peter?"_

I said his name in an attempt to get his attention, but I wasn't sure if I spoke or not, or even if he could hear me if I had.

This place, this time, this experience was a mistake. I could sense the peril, deep-sunk in every niche of my mind. It was instinct, not logic—we sped way past logic years ago anyway—that said there was danger lurking in every corner here. Wherever _here_ was.

I looked for Peter, wanting to touch him and assure myself he was there when I realized suddenly that I was alone and Peter was nowhere to be found.

_Peter!_ I screamed for him and got no response.

And still the ongoing cracking inside my mind continued—the rigid paralysis of a loss gaining momentum fast enough to leave me breathless.

Whipping my head around I realized that everything around me had disappeared. I was no longer in the dingy apartment with Peter's solid body pressed against my back. Instead, I was alone with the static, white-noise of my mind which was losing its hold on something paramount and irretrievable. I was no place, had no body, saw no light. Nothing could fill the vast emptiness of non-space I found myself in.

In that nauseating moment, with the world-tilting perceptual shift of looking at a Magic Eye poster, I realized it wasn't myself that was cracking, but Peter. It was his mind I felt uncoupling and slipping away, writhing bits of him tearing raggedly from me and disappearing. It felt a lot like drowning: chest burning, forehead tight, hands clenched.

I screamed his name again, but no sound penetrated the silence.

I could still sense Peter—feel his fear and anguish—but he was growing more and more distant. I tried desperately to get to him, but failed. Something was terribly wrong—I could feel it now, in the snarling blank space where Peter used to be. I felt how his mind couldn't take this sudden break from mine.

I was going to lose him. I took a deep breath and forced myself to yank myself together, somehow found some savage will to reach out, find, and grasp Peter again, as remote as he was.

Nothing.

The last thing I remember was that I'd lost him, that he was gone, flown away in one of the little bits that fluttered like magpies around me and no amount of grasping or wailing would bring him back.

I did the only thing left that seemed even remotely useful.

I forced a final breath into my unwilling lungs and screamed Walter's name.

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><p>Break. Break. Break.<p>

Break. Break. Break.

Break. Break. Break.

Break. Break. Break.

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><p>Break. Break. Break.<p>

Break. Break. Break.

Break. Break. Break.

Break. Break. Break.

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><p>When I woke up the first thing I felt was a soft hand moving across my face and coming to rest on my forehead.<p>

"Olivia?" I rasped, but I'm not sure I got all the syllables out in the right order.

When I cracked one eye open, Astrid pulled her hand away and smiled her soft smile at me, placing her finger to her lips in the universal gesture of shut-the-hell-up. I looked anxiously around the room, trying to figure out where I was. When I recognized the lab's office and realized I was laying on the couch, I became aware of the sound of raised voices. An argument was pouring through the half-open office door from the other room.

"Forget it, Walter." That was Olivia barking at Walter, and I saw the tips of her hair fly out as she rounded a corner closest to the slice of the lab I could see through the partially ajar door. Her bare feet slapped on the concrete floor when she followed Walter over to the shelf as he stashed something away.

"Olivia!" Walter boomed, his Boston Brahmin accent sharpening every vowel in her name, "I'm not happy about it either, but—

"This is beyond _'not happy'_ Walter." Olivia mimicked Walter's vowels perfectly, the accent spot-on.

I looked at Astrid and grunted a little, "How long have I been out?"

Astrid withdrew her hand from my forehead, obviously satisfied that I wasn't burning up with fever and rose to her feet from where she had been kneeling next to me.

Her mouth twisted with wry discomfort. "Do you mean before or after Olivia climbed on top of you in the chair and pummeled you back to consciousness?"

When I just blinked at her stupidly, she simplified things for my sluggish brain, "An hour, maybe a little more. Including when we couldn't get you out of the chair right after and we had to wait for you to be conscious enough to drag you into the office."

Shit. That wasn't what I wanted to hear. Apart from the almost painful misery-coated fear radiating off of Olivia in waves from the other room, I didn't remember much of anything except a feeling of rather debilitating failure that my fuzzy brain wasn't really able to categorize at the moment.

"How long have they been at it?" I asked in a low voice.

"Thirty, forty-five minutes," she whispered back, scooping up the bottom half of my legs and plopping down under them at the end of the couch so my legs draped across her lap. "And you're stuck with me because the last time they argued I ended up cleaning up the mess when Walter tried to prove to her you really could travel through time."

I grimaced. Walter and Olivia could fight so long, bitter, and nasty they'd shame a Reality TV star into good manners. The last battle had involved a lot of food as test subjects, and I reminded myself to get Astrid something really, really nice when her birthday came next month. Walter and I might bicker nearly incessantly, but we rarely actually fought, largely because I almost never felt whatever it was Walter had set his heart on was worth the energy, so I just let it go.

In case it's still a secret, "let it go" isn't in Olivia's vocabulary.

Astrid looked at me a little skeptically, "Do you remember anything?"

I just shook my head at her, doing my very best to ignore the pity seeping into Astrid's expression. What little I did remember I wasn't sure I'd ever be able to talk about, even with Olivia, and I was pretty sure she'd seen the whole thing.

Walter finished shoving equipment around on the shelf and the edges of his white lab coat swished around his legs as he headed down the stairs in the slice of lab visible through the partially open door. A second later Olivia followed him down, but she was slower and used the handrail, limping a little on the stairs, although it didn't slow her down by much. Olivia's abilities always seemed to manifest themselves physically in a number of unpredictable ways. Some part of her body was inevitably stiff and sore afterwards—the more complex the abilities, the more intense were her physical symptoms afterwards. If I lived in a world where I could actually reveal the day-to-day details of my life to another living soul, I would have enjoyed writing that up for publication.

Olivia had put her pants back on but evidently hadn't had the time to don her shirt. I could see her bare back peeking out from the curtain of her hair as she followed Walter wearing only her pants and bra.

Shit, it must be bad if at least thirty minutes had passed and Olivia hadn't thought to put her shirt back on.

"Damnit Walter, stop!" Olivia practically shouted at him. I saw her stop at the bottom of the stairs, the left side of her body visible through the door.

A second later Walter was in front of her bending over her and I watched her back arch as she stretched away from him a little.

Walter's voice was lower this time, but no less insistent. "Olivia, I don't want Peter hurt or endangered any more than you do, but I don't see any alternatives. If you have one, please, let's hear it."

Thick silence followed. Then a few minutes later I heard Olivia shift and mumble a little in the harsh silence.

"No more drugs Walter. Not anymore." I could feel Olivia's discomfort crawling like a thousand insects just under my skin.

"No more drugs," she repeated, a little louder this time. "Something wasn't . . . right in there. He was slipping away." She took a half-step away from Walter in assent. "It's too harsh. I'm afraid it'll kill him. Or worse."

"What do you propose, my dear?" Walter straightened to give her some space in her defeat. His voice had that triumphant I-already-know-what-you're-going-to-say-but-I'll-make-you-say-it-anyway note to it.

"I'll show him," Olivia muttered.

"What do you mean?" Walter asked, with feigned innocence.

I could almost see Olivia's chin come up in challenge to Walter. "I said I'll show him," she repeated, and her voice held that odd combination of determination and resignation I'd come to associate with some of her more alarming resolutions.

"Anything is better than this," she added defiantly.

I heard the squeak of Walter's rubber-soled shoes as he turned away from Olivia since I could tell he'd already gotten what he wanted.

"No lab though," Olivia called after him, triumph now ringing in _her_ voice.

"Excuse me?" Walter said, his voice now coming from further across the room and I knew he'd stopped in his tracks where he was when he heard Olivia's conditions.

"You heard me," Olivia said, her voice hard and sharp as cut glass. "No lab. No notes. No observations. No experiments! No _you_, Walter. Just me. And Peter. I'll show him. _Alone_."

"But, but, you won't know what to do," Walter was sputtering now. "What to try, how to make sure—" Walter trailed off, I guess when he saw the look on Olivia's face.

Silence hung heavy between them. Several moments later I heard Olivia's heavy footsteps headed toward the office door.

She shoved hard at the door, pushing it so it swung wide on its hinges and banged against the wall behind it so hard I worried the frosted glass window would shatter. Olivia stood in the doorway, eyes trained on me, now guiltily shrinking back into the couch.

She put her hands on her hips. "You heard, Sleeping Beauty?"

I nodded, though I'm not sure why. It wasn't a question.

She waited a few minutes, probably trying to decide whether to bend me to her will with her mind or not. Her eyes flicked at Astrid and I, tucked in together on the couch. "This won't be fun," she said. "Maybe you should put your doctor-friend's number in my cell or something in case you pass out again."

Even though I hadn't had much say in the matter, I felt inexplicably guilty for eavesdropping on her and Walter's argument. But after the evening I had I wasn't in the mood to be her verbal punching bag. That riled me enough to retort back hotly, "I did _not_ pass out."

"Uh huh," she said. "So what did you do when you stood up from the recliner—a helluva lot more comfortable than the gurneys, by the way—took two steps toward the door and crumpled into a heap?"

"I'm not sure, but it wasn't passing-out." I glared at her so she would know I meant it, but I guessed it wasn't all that effective since I also shrank a little closer to Astrid as if she might be able to protect me from Olivia's cutting appraisal.

Astrid stifled a nervous snicker. So much for protection.

"Whatever," Olivia said waving her hand in the air near her ear to indicate I wasn't worth the trouble to argue with. "Next time you don't pass out, do it on the bed at home would you? You're fucking heavy."

She looked me over like she was trying to assess my character and measure my fortitude in one glance. "We start tomorrow," she said.

She turned abruptly and walked out of the room. I saw her bend to scoop her overcoat up from the pile by the door and slide into it before she strode out of the lab.

It didn't occur to me until several minutes later to point out to Olivia that she forgot to put on her shirt.

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><p>Break. Break. Break.<p>

Break. Break. Break.

Break. Break. Break.

Break. Break. Break.

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><p>Break. Break. Break.<p>

Break. Break. Break.

Break. Break. Break.

Break. Break. Break.

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><p>Fuck if I know how Peter found me.<p>

I'd deliberately gone to a bar I thought Peter didn't know about to get some time to myself. I was beginning to think every bartender in the city owed Peter one kind of favor or another because it was the only way to explain how he always managed to find me. Either that, or he put a tracking device in my phone.

I squinted at my unlit phone resting on the table next to the cluster of empty glasses. Both options were equally probable.

I knew it was unfair for me to take off after what we'd just experienced, but I needed some time by myself to decide how I felt about this evening's mental pogrom without Peter hovering nearby to muddle things up.

Although frankly, after what had just happened in the lab, Peter had a lot more to think and drink about than I did.

I really did need my alone-time. It was how I re-charged, processed all the rage into something constructive. And since I'd more or less moved in with Peter and Walter, my solitude was getting dearer and harder to attain.

I didn't bother to look away when he came in. He moved purposefully across the floor of the mostly-empty bar, shoulders hunched against the cold, hands jammed in his coat pockets. It was late, close to two, and this was a drinking-quietly kind of bar, so the club-hoppers had already come and gone, leaving just me and a few other hardcore regulars with the sounds of creaking wood, hoarse voices, and the dimmed volume of music coming from nowhere.

Peter saw me looking at him from the minute he came in. He detoured to the bar to order a round of drinks. After they were fetched, he came over to stand by my table.

He had two shots cupped in each palm and a beer bottle dangling from each hand, thumb pressing the necks into the sides of each hand. He extended one hand's worth of drinks out in front of him by way of a greeting and waited for an invitation to sit.

I looked up at him, noting that he wore the carefully arranged blank-face I'd come to associate with a whole truckload of tumult bubbling under Peter's bland exterior, but I didn't offer the invite he was obviously gunning for.

"I left the lab so I could be alone," I pointed out when he just stood there. "If I wanted company I'd have waited to drive your swooning-ass home."

He reached into his buttoned overcoat and pulled out a wad of material. When it landed in my lap I realized it was my rumpled and creased work-shirt. Peter smirked at me. "Thought you might want this at some point."

I folded the shirt in half and set it next to me on the booth. Thankfully my tank had gotten folded inside my overcoat when I undressed before the experiment. So even though I left my button-up and suit-jacket behind when I left the lab, at least I had my tank to cover my bra, allowing me to unbutton my overcoat in the bar and avoid heatstroke.

I've never been able to decide if Peter just takes great delight in making me uncomfortable, or if the winds of his own needs just naturally blow completely opposite of mine. Instead of sitting in the chair across from me like any other civilized human being would have done, Peter folded himself gracefully next to me on the upright half-booth, casually sliding across the wood to fit his right side against my left—thigh, hip, shoulder—and pushing two of the shots and a beer so they were in front of me.

I've always been nothing short of amazed by how elegantly he moves that big body of his. I don't know whether it's instinct or discipline, but Peter does everything he can to downplay his size—the hunched shoulders, the oversized layers of clothing, the blank, unruffled face all scream _I'm not a threat_—and yet I'll bet quite a few people had discovered misery and ruin as a result of underestimating Peter's physical abilities.

He didn't look at me when he tossed back one of his drinks, swallowed, cradled the other in his hand and took a sip.

"So, what's got your knickers in a twist?" he asked, almost thoughtfully a few minutes later. If one could ask such a question thoughtfully, that is. He drank half of the other drink and took a sip of his beer. The alcohol made his normal gravelly drone a little harsher than usual when he added, "It looks like I'm the one who has to relive every fault, failing, and blunder I've done to injure someone I cared about."

When I didn't look at him or say anything he added, "And, naturally, the one person I'd like to keep those mistakes hidden from is tagging along as an eyewitness. So, shouldn't _you_ be hauling _me_ out of bars after last call?"

Okay, that was fair. But, frankly, fairness wasn't much of an element in my life anymore. I was trying to puzzle through why Walter's drugs would have made it feel like Peter's mind was being ripped away from mine. And why had we slipped into Peter's mind in the first place and not my own? But intelligent thought was growing increasingly difficult with Peter's thigh pressed against mine and his upper body leaning into my space.

"Is that what that was?" I asked him quietly. "A memory? Or did we go back in time?"

Peter gulped down the last of his drink and took a pull on his beer. He was so close to me I could hear him swallow, feel the heat radiating off of his body and seeping into my skin through my clothes.

He shrugged, a small movement of his shoulders and tipped his head a little in my direction. "Hell if I know. Maybe it was a memory, or maybe I did move through time. They said I could. Maybe I took you along with me."

Of course, whether it was a memory or time travel wasn't really a salient point at the moment. I had a feeling what we would need to do once we got into the machine wouldn't depend even slightly on how or when we went. Rather, what seemed to matter right now was _where_ we had gone and why. I was pretty sure I understood why Peter and I landed in that moment. I'm not exactly celebrated for knowing my own mind, or anyone else's for that matter, but I did know Peter—knew him well enough to realize that whatever he said to Elizabeth was something he couldn't or wouldn't forgive himself for, regardless of me not being able to hear the details of the conversation. The minute we'd slipped together into his mind, we'd headed straight for a moment that represented a failure of some kind for Peter.

I was still reeling from the implications of what we'd just experienced. Dreading failure was something I understood intimately. What I didn't understand was the relationship between Peter's perceived failures and the effects of Walter's drugs that resulted in us actually splitting consciousnesses. That was the real worry—the way that Peter had just slipped away.

"So, I understand what's bothering me," he said after a long silence. "Do you want to take a turn?"

Not really. I was even more in the dark about what had just happened than I usually was and the unknowing was making me anxious. I could feel our time running out around here. The reports Broyles wrangled from The Powers That Be on the Other Side were all gloom and doom. Every sign indicated we were rapidly advancing on the moment when Peter would have to get into the machine.

"Of course you don't," Peter muttered after he glanced at my face from the corner of his eye.

Well, that was rude. And unnecessary. If Peter wanted someone to discuss every feeling whenever and wherever they felt them, he should have cut his losses and went looking for someone else a long time ago.

He glanced at me again while he played with the beer bottle, idly swirling it between one palm and then the other. I was pretty sure my face said exactly what I was thinking.

"Whatever," he mumbled under his breath, shaking his head. He took another pull on the bottle, sighed and leaned back so his shoulders were resting on the booth.

He set the bottle down on the table and shook his head again like he was trying to shake off a bad feeling, then shifted a little, starting to get up.

Just like that I realized I didn't want him to leave. I'd wanted to be alone to think, but now that Peter was here, I couldn't help but remember the sickening feeling of him slipping away. Now that he was back, re-rooted firmly in the barren claypan of my mind where nothing else prospered, he felt like the only solid thing in a chaotic, downright hostile, world.

Crazily enough, it pissed me off.

I grabbed his wrist as he stood up, tugging him so he sank back into the booth next to me. Then the words just came tumbling out of my mouth, an ugly, desperate, unreasonable, reckless mess of them.

"The truth is, I'm fucking terrified Peter. It's just great when you follow me to the bar like you always do, trying to make me feel better about everything falling apart around us, but what if you die? Right there next to me? It's probably going to happen." I sucked in a breath and gripped his wrist harder. Peter pulled at the constraint until both our hands were resting on his thigh. "I can't—" I shook my head at him. "Uh-uh. No way, Peter."

I shuffled away from him a little, trying to put a little distance between us so I could get a full breath and better explain. He rested his other hand on top of mine on his thigh, trapping me close to him, which only irritated me more. "And the best part is," I added, "_If_ you survive this process, and that's a big fucking _IF_, we're only getting you prepared to die anyway," I shuddered, "which, oh yes, it's my job to help you do that too."

It's not just cussedness and an overdeveloped sense of independence that makes me generally unwilling to talk about my feelings. It's mostly that I suck at it.

Peter's mouth curved, lips pressed together while he watched me for a number of long minutes. Then he said, "That might be the most words you've ever said to me all at once."

I just snorted and shook my head at him.

He grinned wider and tilted his head in my direction. "It's not how you usually do this."

I looked away from him and he leaned his shoulder into mine, bumping it fondly. "I know you don't like it, but I could learn to live with it."

I just shrugged, uncomfortable with having it all out there in the open. None of the things I'd said made any sense, and none of them even came close to explaining how I was feeling.

"I get it," Peter mused, "It's what you do—how you screw your courage to the sticking spot. You get angry and it makes you stronger, better. But usually you just bang things around all silent and deadly."

When I glared at him, he said, "This way, at least I know what's going on in that head of yours—which is an ongoing mystery, by the way, in spite of our connection."

A long moment passed while I gathered the nerve to ask him.

I swallowed loud enough I was sure he heard it, "Did you feel that earlier?" I asked, cursing the low and frightened note in my voice, when I'd expended a lot of energy to keep it strong and steady.

Peter drained the last couple of sips of his beer and set the bottle back down on the table very carefully, not looking at me. "Yep."

"What do you think it means?" I asked, terrified he knew and I wouldn't like it.

Peter inclined his head a little sarcastically and smiled his feckless, I-don't-give-a-shit smile but, his voice was raw and deadly serious. "I don't know why it happened, apart from what you've already figured out: that the drugs were too harsh. So, I don't know why, but I do think it means that Walter was right. That we're not supposed to function individually anymore. Not in general and not when it comes time to run the machine." He turned in my direction partway to give the appearance of looking at me and gave me a jaunty, sarcastic salute.

I was right. I didn't like the answer, but it suddenly hit me that it wasn't for the reason I'd have imagined.

I'd never really anticipated Peter's occupation of my mind being quite so, well, _necessary_. Wherever we'd gone this evening, _when_ever it was, he'd just fallen away from me, the tentacles of his mind unraveling from mine with surprising speed and ferocity, leaving me empty and alone. After the number of times in the past year I'd tried to secure the borders of myself against unending breaches, I would have thought that losing Peter would be a relief.

But that's not what happened at all. He was sitting right next to me, but just the recollection of his absence was causing a cold sweat to prickle under my arms and pool in the space between my breasts. We'd both skirted along the edges of violence and oblivion for so long it was habit to assume that we'd always be able to avoid death.

"And I know that learning you are chained to me until we fix or finish this thing is the last thing you want to hear coming from me—" Peter was saying, and this time the shrug was intensely self-deprecating, "—but you asked me what I thought."

He sat up from his slumped position, looking me in the eye now, a wicked gleam in his own.

"Plus, all that talking with the rage? It's hot."

And Peter claims that _I_ deflect and evade. I played along anyway, though. If anyone knew about the value of hedging, stonewalling, and equivocation to preserve emotional stability, it was me. Most of the time Peter could be counted on to not press me when it was obvious I didn't want to talk about something.

I figured, at the very least, I owed him the same courtesy.

So, instead of asking him more uncomfortable questions, I rolled my eyes and shook my head, "Don't you ever think about anything else?" I grew up in the same household as Rachel after all, so I knew just how to inject the right amount of feigned feminine disbelief, scorn and distaste in my voice.

Peter smiled at me. Big enough that I glimpsed a flash of teeth before he said, "Well, as you've pointed out, I'm a dead man walking, so yeah, getting laid as much as possible in the little time I have left is pretty high on the list."

And then, quick as lightning, Peter leaned across the few inches that separated us in the booth and pressed his mouth to mine.

The kiss was teasing, taunting even, while the hand he'd rested on my thigh drifted slowly northward caressing as it went. My mouth was already open in surprise and his tongue slid lazily against mine, lingering just a little too long for decency in a public place before he moved his mouth to my ear, nuzzling my loose hair out of the way and growling into it, "Want to head home and get started on that?"

Jesus, his voice! Had it always sounded so rough and rich and sinful? Or was he pulling out that wheedling tone just for me? Hard to say, but hell if it wasn't turning what was left of my mind to jelly. I'd already run through and then out of all the reason and fear and anger I was capable of tonight anyway. The only thing I had left to offer was basic physical response.

"There's a list?" I managed to croak.

"Mmmm," he hummed into my neck and I felt the rough slick of his tongue along my throat, the heated curl of his palm along my ribs inside the flaps of my coat, angling me toward him a bit more. "A long one. You have _no_ idea."

Something in the vicinity of my chest lightened and unlocked, the awkward yield of a frozen gear sliding along its rightful path.

I didn't fear my own death. How could I, after having come so close so many times before? No, what I feared was being left alone in the world with no one to understand me. I'd never believed in even the possibility of such an understanding before Peter, but now that I'd tasted it, I was certain I couldn't get along without it. Peter _knew_ me—all the way through the horrors that lived inside my head, to the dark, ratty, hidden, slivers of violence and destructive rage that made me who I was—and he hadn't run away screaming. He was here, his mouth rasping against my throat and his fingers curled around my waist.

Something raw and vigilant roared to life in my chest. I was going to lose him. I knew that, and just like every other violation in my life, I was going to have to line up and wait for it and then learn to endure it afterwards.

But right now, he was here. And for the moment, he was still mine.

"Let's get out of here," I choked.

We exited into the dark and cold streets, heading toward the T-stop shoulder to shoulder. Peter slid an arm around my waist and I let myself lean into him a little.

Maybe it was the alcohol, although I wasn't drunk, only slightly—and pleasantly—buzzed. More likely I wanted to give the metaphorical finger to the miserable Fates, malevolent beings who saw fit to grant me awareness of Peter's understanding, only to cruelly take it away.

About a block from the T-stop I veered off the sidewalk and down a narrow alley between two buildings, dragging Peter behind me with a hand linked around his wrist.

"Uhh, Olivia?" Peter asked, and he sounded a little nervous.

I didn't answer, just tugged harder on his hands until we were far enough into the dim space that we were cloaked in shadows. Something possessive and fierce commanded me; I pushed him against the brick wall with a palm on his sternum, jammed my other hand down the front of his jeans, and raised up on my tiptoes to suck hard on his neck. What little I had was likely going to be taken from me, and soon. Right now I wanted to prove that he was still mine, to show that I'd fight anyone or anything to the death—mine or theirs—to keep him.

For once, Peter didn't have a smart-ass comment on standby. He hissed when my hand turned to palm his thickening cock and twisted one hand in my hair to hold my face against his neck, while the other reflexively squeezed my hip hard enough to bruise.

A short while later, the space inside his jeans was tight enough to be uncomfortable. Still dragging teeth and lips unevenly along his neck, I pulled my hands free and dedicated myself to the task of loosening his belt, button and zipper, an enterprise I accomplished with uncharacteristic speed given that the task usually required a good deal more concentration than I was capable of at the moment.

I dropped to my knees where the cold slush of the remains of last night's snow soaked my trousers in seconds, one hand holding up the back of Peter's jeans so they wouldn't drop all the way to his ankles, the other cupping his balls.

I pulled him into my mouth completely as his hands twisted convulsively in my hair.

I couldn't grasp much about the makeup of the universe and I didn't perceive the nuances of Time, the fickle Bitch, but this, _this_, I understood. Making Peter groan and buck and gasp my name while I was on my knees before him in this supposedly submissive position, _this_ was the kind of real I understood, one I could actually hold in my hand and feel all the way down to muscle and sinew and bone.

Peter's hands applied polite pressure on the back of my head. "Something wrong with the bed at home?" he gritted, but I noticed he didn't let up with his hands.

My breath made puffs of smoke billow out from the sides of his groin and I pulled back a second to breathe.

"You think you're the first guy to get head in this alley?" I asked, by way of an answer before swallowing him down again.

"Uhhhnn," he replied, clearly struggling with the cognitive nuances of his native language. "In _this_ alley?" he gasped, forcibly tearing his gaze away from my mouth to glance at the narrow, shadow-cloaked space. "Well, maybe the first who didn't have to pay for it." He grunted when I pulled him into my mouth with enough suction that I heard the hollow thump of his head when it fell back against the brick wall.

That's the thing about Peter. Put us in the heart of the worst situation imaginable and somehow he has the ability to make me laugh at it and us both. The world was likely going to come to an end, we were going to be permanently separated—by death or possibly something a good deal worse—and somehow I was overcome with the almost overwhelming desire to belly-laugh.

The stress must finally be chipping away at the forged-steel of my nerves.

"Oh, you'll pay," I promised. And then I gave up thinking to concentrate on the serious business of getting him off.

"Looking forward to it," he muttered and then, finally, Peter stopped trying to talk. After that, the only sounds he emitted were monosyllabic grunts punctuated by parts of what might have been my name.

Either the clandestine nature of our location was hotter than I anticipated or he really had some pent-up frustration because it didn't take very long at all. It couldn't have been five minutes before his thumb brushed my cheek and he huffed, "Olivia, honey," the only endearment he ever allowed himself escaping his lips just before he came. I never moved away in spite of the warning and I gulped a little as he came, keeping him in the warmth of my mouth until his hands grew heavy on my head and he started to soften.

I guided him down and away from my lips, pulling up his boxers and pants at the same time, trying to protect his sensitive skin from the cold and the rough material of his clothes as best I could.

When he was adjusted and his pants were back around his hips, I rocked back from my knees to my toes into a squat and then stood, leaning my shoulders and chest against his to stave off the head-rush from standing so quickly while I jammed my hands between us to fasten his pants and belt again.

He dropped his head so his lips rested on the top of my head, both of us swaying with the panting breaths he towed into his lungs.

A few minutes later we stumbled out from between the buildings and down into the T-station where we boarded the train back to Cambridge. As soon as the doors closed and the lights dimmed, Peter pushed me down onto my back in the last seat of the darkened, empty car and kissed me senseless, scrubbing his thigh roughly between my legs, mauling my breasts under my tank, pulling my nipples between his finger and thumb roughly through the material of my bra.

When the Cambridge station was announced over the loudspeaker, Peter yanked me up and pulled me to him with a hard hand on my neck, the other on my ass, guiding me out the door, into the station, and up the stairs to Mass Ave by walking forward, pushing me along in front of him as he went.

For the five-block walk home, Peter stopped at least every block to push me up against an available vertical surface, pinning me between it and his body while he yanked my head back with a tangled handful of hair, sucked on my neck, groped my breasts through the thin material of my tank, and ground his half-hard cock or harder hipbone against my clit until we were in front of his house and I was a frenzied mass of craving, half out of my mind with lust.

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><p>Break. Break. Break.<p>

Break. Break. Break.

Break. Break. Break.

Break. Break. Break.

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><p>Break. Break. Break.<p>

Break. Break. Break.

Break. Break. Break.

Break. Break. Break.

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><p>Olivia's entire body was shivering and it wasn't with cold. I knew from recent experience how the cold only augmented the lust, how it made the heat of my skin and the wet fire of my mouth that much more stimulating.<p>

She was almost beside herself with desire and it was the most gorgeous thing I've ever seen. I pulled back from her for a moment to look at her, trying to memorize this moment so I could hold it in my mind forever. Olivia is always an enthusiastic partner, no question, but it was rare for her to broadcast her need so clearly, to lay it out so completely for me to see. I honestly don't know what got into her.

Sure, we had sex in semi-public places with a fair amount of regularity, but those occasions were clear-cut cases of expediency, not exhibitionism. Tonight though, she was greedy, her touch brazen, vigilant, and impatient, as if she were afraid I might be taken away. When she pulled me down that alley and dropped to her knees in front of me, she was jealously possessive; she _needed_ me, maybe even needed to prove something. And I know I wasn't imagining it when I heard her breathe, "_Mine,_" into my hip the moment before she sucked my cock into her mouth.

Coming from Olivia, that declaration was more permanent and immutable than any vow ever uttered in a church.

Now we were standing in front of the house, Olivia's body crushed between my own and the unyielding cold of the retaining wall that held up the double-lot yard surrounding our house. One hand was on her left breast, freed from the bra I'd shoved up, the other down her trousers and underwear, my middle finger hooked inside her while she bit her lip, dug her nails into my neck and whimpered in my ear.

I moved my hand from her breast and used it to shove her pants down, trying to comprehend the logistics of reciprocating her earlier attentions to me.

I dropped to my knees in front of her, showing her how to cover my head with the flaps of her coat. It took a few tries to get through to her since she seemed particularly uncaring about exposure tonight, but she finally caught on enough to yank her coat across the back of my head, snapping one of the snaps so her hands were free to dig into my shoulders and hold my face between her legs.

The air inside her closed coat between her legs was warm and humid in erotic contrast to the cold I could feel slicing into every other part of my body except my face and my left hand.

I used my right hand to tilt her hips into a more comfortable angle, though it was still far from ideal since Olivia still needed to use her legs to hold her up.

I tongued her clit and slid my finger back home inside her. I'd have liked to have given her some more thorough licks, but with her still upright, my tongue just didn't reach that far. The physics of our position left a lot to be desired, but Olivia didn't seem to be complaining, so I focused myself to the task at hand.

In fact, the opposite was true. In less than a minute, Olivia's belly and thighs were trembling around my head and she was shoving almost violently against my face and hand.

Her hands were flailing around, pressed against the top of my head through the material of her coat, scrabbling against the stone wall behind her and her breaths were coming in the short, harsh pants I'd grown to associate with her impending orgasm.

But she didn't come. I don't know if it was the current stress we were under or the exposed nature of our position, but I worked for a very long time with no hint of progression.

A long time later I couldn't help but think about how my knees ached, my tongue was cramping from repetitive motion, and how very much I wanted to rest my screaming limbs. The alcohol, not to mention the residual effects of Walter's exclusive cocktail, weren't doing much to take the edge off my now-throbbing shoulder either. My shoulder was healing nicely—better than nicely, if Olivia's head shakes and raised eyebrows when she helped me change the bandage was anything to go by. She never said anything, but she didn't have to. I could see the term "super-human recovery" etched into her face as she monitored my progress as clearly as if it was carved into stone.

But, super-human or not, I'd had an exhausting day, which is not something you think about at the first blush of desire, but it _was_ something you considered when you were post-orgasm yourself and on your knees on the cold ground with you face buried between a woman's legs for the better part of twenty minutes.

I was beginning to hope that she'd fake it so we could go inside, when she grabbed my head and yanked it back, popping the snaps on her coat in the process. The cold rush of air to my face and her belly made us both gasp.

Her chest heaved and her legs wobbled around my shoulders. She put shaking hands on either side of my face and wheezed, "I don't think I can stand up anymore."

I nuzzled her belly with my nose and mouth while I pulled her pants and underwear back up around her hips, so thankful for the reprieve I smiled into her stomach.

"I can do a better job when you're on your back anyway," I promised as I slowly stood, trying to get some blood back into my bent limbs.

We hobbled up the stairs to the porch together and somehow made it in the house, out of our coats, and up the stairs together.

Once in the bedroom, I stripped Olivia down myself, since her shaking hands didn't seem capable of accomplishing much anyway. It was so warm in the house in contrast to the cold of outside, I pulled off my own pants and t-shirt over my head before I pushed her down onto the bed and followed her, pressing my body against her.

She breathed sharply at the contact, and my cock twitched to life again at the feel of her skin against mine as I slid down her body.

Her abdominal muscles twitched in anticipation and her ribs slinked under her skin when I draped one knee and then the other over my shoulders. I used my hands under her ass to tilt her pelvis to give me a better angle, pushed open her thighs with my elbows, and pressed my face to her.

I lapped at her with my tongue—slowly now since there was no need to hurry to escape the cold, the discomfort, or the fear of discovery—and she let out a deep breath in a rush and then sucked it back in when I began gently pulling her down from the precipice of over-stimulation she'd been hovering over for a while now.

My right hand fanned out across her stomach, covering her abdomen almost completely, and the feel of the buttery skin underneath my palm made me feel dizzy and drunk, though I was barely tipsy when we left the bar. My cock stirred in response. A second later, she gripped my hand with both of hers and squeezed it in time with the deliberately alternating pace of my tongue and now finger as I worked her down a little so I could build her back up.

I pulled my hand free from hers, lifting her pelvis higher with the other, spreading her thighs even more with my elbows as I slid my index finger to join the middle inside her and curled them, adding that stroking to the deliberate rhythm of my tongue.

Olivia's breaths got gradually shorter and harsher, and her hands scrabbled to twist in the sheets of our unmade bed and a few minutes later she was coming against me, rocking into my face with abandon, her upper body reflexively lifting and then collapsing back down on the bed.

She came forever, one wave rolling right on top of the other. She was wild, out of control and seemed to have no concept of the way she was pulling at the bed, squeezing my shoulders with her thighs and jamming my face into her with her hips.

The sight of an utterly abandoned Olivia thrashing about on the bed had me completely hard again in about ten seconds. Since I somehow had morphed into my nineteen year-old self again, I eluded the vice-like grip of her thighs, crawled up her body, and thrust into her.

When I did, her shuddering body clamped down so hard on mine I didn't think I'd be able to breathe, let alone move, but I somehow managed it.

Her hands let loose of the mangled sheets to wrap around my neck and she twisted my head to hers. When she pulled my mouth down for a kiss, the rough slide of her tongue along mine reminded me that she was tasting herself in my mouth. The thought was so hot I felt myself climbing again in just a few minutes.

After stroking into her until we were both damp and limp and then shuddering through my climax for an abnormally lengthy period of time, I collapsed on top of her, fumbling halfheartedly to get my hands under my shoulders to take at least some of my weight off her.

"Jesus, God-Almighty, you're going to kill me," I panted. "I'm not nineteen anymore you know."

"Better way to go anyway," Olivia muttered and she braced her hands on my shoulders and pushed so I slid onto my side next to her.

She rolled towards me, draping an arm across my waist and pressing her mouth to my chest. She gave my naked ass a little, affectionate pat and about a minute later she was snoring against me.

I laid next to her for a long time that night, unable to sleep in spite of my exhaustion, listening to Olivia's soft snores punctuated by her little breathy moans, feeling her restless twitching against me, and trying to figure out how, in any lifetime, I was ever going to be selfless enough to give her up.

I was beginning to understand how a man would be willing to annihilate a world, hundreds of worlds even and exterminate all their inhabitants too, to preserve a thing of such remarkable value.


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary**: Olivia comes back. Olivia and Peter save the world. Again.

**Rating**: M. Though this particular chapter isn't much of one.

**Disclaimer**: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.

**Spoilers**: Early season 3_. _Includes some elements of the early part of Season 3, but no spoilers beyond that.

Thanks to starg8fans for the power-beta.

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><p><strong>AN:** Nope, not dead, just . . . writing. The delay on Chapter 17 had everything to do with wanting to be able to report that I've finished drafting the end of this monster. And I have! The end is written (though not revised or sent to beta and I have no idea how long that will take).

So, for those of you who are counting, the whole thing will be 21 chapters, plus a brief Coda, total. And many thanks for the kind comments/reviews/PM's as well. My life is quite dull and they make me happy. Enjoy!

-MV

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><p><strong>Chapter 17<strong>

"So," I said, plunging my hands into the steaming dishwater as we cleaned up from Sunday night's meal, one actually prepared at home for a change, "Where do we do this?"

Olivia glanced at me from the sides of her eyes and shoved her hands into her pockets. She shifted her shoulders in a little half-shrug and stared at the dishwater like it might offer her some advice. Following Walter's failed experiment when we went wandering around in each other's minds, Olivia had promised that she would start showing me how to link with her the next day. But Saturday and Sunday came and went without Olivia mentioning it at all. Even Walter kept his mouth shut about it, probably since I'd told him in no uncertain terms that his input wasn't welcome.

Even with the reassurances that there would be no mind-altering substances to facilitate the experience, I wasn't anxious to do that again, since having Olivia in my head was mind-altering enough as it was. Still, I was getting a little tired of living in anticipation of whatever delightful experience was in store for me next.

Olivia yanked her hands out of her pockets and snatched a towel from the rack and started drying the dishes I finished very carefully, very precisely. She took two steps toward the table and began stacking them up.

I paused my washing to study her. I caught her looking at me, and when I met her eyes, hers slid away. She came back up next to me to accept the next dish, and I handed it to her before I went back to my washing.

I kept washing. Waited. I knew Olivia would talk about it when she was ready.

A while passed. The dishes were nearly done, neatly stacked on the table and Olivia had moved to put them back in the cupboards while I busied myself drying the last few.

She moved through the kitchen, pausing and kneeling along the way to scrub under the chin of the cat that had shown up on our porch one cold night sometime between when Olivia set the lab on fire and the night the hotel room exploded.

It couldn't be healthy that I was measuring time by the order and frequency with which things around me spontaneously combusted.

The cat purred loudly, winding its way dangerously through Olivia's ankles as she rose to put the glasses in the cabinet.

I bit back a snide comment.

The cat had been a bone of contention between us since the evening I'd arrived home from New York after a day of mind-and-ass-numbing paperwork at Massive Dynamic. Luckily, only very rarely did I have to present myself to rubber-stamp some of Massive Dynamic's more costly ventures, but it never put me in a good mood when I had to do so.

The minute I'd entered the house that night I knew something was wrong. It wasn't because Olivia and Walter were sitting too-close together on the couch and not fighting about anything. And it wasn't because a barely-dressed Olivia was wearing one of my T-shirts and _nothing_ else (I was fervently grateful my father was sitting _next_ to her, since the view from across the room was enough to give me a coronary). It wasn't even because the sound that greeted me as I dumped my coat, shoes and bag in the entryway was a distinctly non-Walterish giggle that made the hair on my forearms lift uncomfortably.

No, the reason I knew something was wrong was because a creature of indeterminate species swiveled its head to glare at the noise I made when entering the room. It was amber-striped, nothing but skin and bones, and perched on the coffee table in the middle of my living room like it had been born to occupy the post.

Walter and Olivia didn't even notice me because they were both focused on the creature who shifted its weight to one hip, stretched out a back leg, and proceeded to groom what I think were its toes with the kind of improbable daintiness that reminded me of the way the usually-ungainly Olivia could pick her way through the lab to avoid the dead things when she chose to.

"We will call it 'Cat,' like Schrodinger's because when two systems interact they immediately cease to exist, and a single one, for the combined system, takes their place," Walter was quoting to the wide-eyed and captivated Olivia, who nodded sagely as if Walter were reading from the tablets Moses brought down from Sinai.

Olivia had never, _ever_ focused on Walter that intently, even when multiple lives were at stake, including her own.

Walter was still studying the, I guess it _was_ a cat, like he expected it to stand on its hind legs and solve differential equations.

Olivia blinked at Walter and turned her attention back to the animal. "Cat," Olivia echoed solemnly, understandably lagging a bit behind Walter in the conversation. She'd squinted at the animal as if she was trying to figure out if that was indeed its name.

"Yes, it is," Walter agreed.

"It's a cat." Olivia mused. "And its name is "Cat." And then she'd smiled at that mangy, matted thing in a way I spent far too much of my imaginative life wishing she'd smile at me.

Oh, fuck me. Surely Olivia hadn't intentionally—

A quick trip to the kitchen had confirmed my suspicions. Walter had gone overboard (as usual) with baking sweets over the holidays. Since then, he had been on a bread baking kick. We had a new loaf of some concoction of yeast, flour and liquid every day. Who knew Olivia would be such a sucker for fresh bread? She tucked into every loaf Walter baked with gusto: rich brioches, lean Italian breads, hearty peasant loaves, Olivia ate them all. And I encouraged Walter because his baking not only ensured that Olivia got fed more or less regularly, but it also kept him out of trouble. Pretty much the worst thing that could happen was that a loaf would over-rise and then fall.

Or so I'd thought. The loaves fell plenty and Olivia ate the flattened ones too.

Glancing at the mess I was most definitely _not_ going to clean, I'd spotted the crumby remnants of one of Walter's experiments on the cutting board. It was hard to tell if the greenish lump was focaccia or just another fallen failure. Regardless, it was about the only thing in the house, apart from the whiskey, I knew for sure Olivia would consume on her own if I wasn't there to bully her. I sniffed a leftover, crusty edge suspiciously, noting the little flecks of what looked like oregano thickly coating the top of the loaf and the bowl of green butter next to it on the counter.

I already knew there was nothing benign about any of those substances.

I brought the bread remnant back to the living room and held up the dried crust, "Olivia, was this your dinner?"

Olivia peered across the room through distinctly heavy lids. "Peter!" she said, lingering a little too long over the vowels in my name. "You're home."

Then, she blinked at me and dropped her eyes to her bare, bent knees almost bashfully, looking about sixteen, which made me feel like a lecherous scumbag since I couldn't muster the self-control to take my eyes off the way my T-shirt hiked up to show the pale expanse of her thighs.

"Walter, what the hell is going on?"

"Oh, Peter, I'm glad you made it home. Did you wrap up your business with that rapacious cow Nina?" Walter spit the last three words like they were poisoned hemlock and ignored my question.

"Walter, did you get Olivia STONED?" I didn't even bother to lower the unmanly pitch of my voice, letting it climb another octave as I practically screeched, "She's an FBI Agent, for Chrissakes. She could lose her job."

"Ha!" Olivia interjected with the kind of belligerent conviction that only the completely wasted can project. "They couldn't _pay_ someone enough to take my job. Broyles won't fire me. Ever!" The last word was punctuated by a fist in the air, but I couldn't tell if the fervent pump was triumphant or bitter. I tore my eyes away from the bare hipbone the movement exposed and tried to focus on her face.

Though I doubted Olivia would notice the location of my eyes.

"You are RIGHT my dear!" Walter had encouraged her, patting her shoulder. He'd markedly ignored me and tried unsuccessfully not to look too pleased with himself when Olivia didn't jerk away when he touched her. I watched his hand on Olivia's shoulder carefully. If there was anything other than paternal fondness in his touch, I was going to kill him with my bare hands, father or no.

But there was nothing in Walter's face apart from a kind of animated glee that he was not doing a very good job of hiding.

Walter takes a lot of drugs. A _lot_ of drugs. He manufactures them for himself and, occasionally, for Olivia and me or anyone else unfortunate enough to land in his lab for some reason. And I never worried about him doing so because Walter was also fond of appearing a good deal crazier than he actually was. If I had any concerns that he'd overdose, I'd have never tolerated him doing it for himself. No, I'd witnessed how his fussy, madcap scientist schtick got him out of heaps of trouble time and time again.

I was positive that Walter had halfway planned this. Made the bread and left it out for Olivia, making sure to be conveniently absent when she ate it, so he wouldn't have to take responsibility but could reap the rewards.

I'd scrubbed my hands over my eyes. I'd spent the entire day in an office, something I worked a large part of my life very hard to avoid, practically going stir-crazy because it felt like Nina's reflective steel-and-glass walls were closing in on me. All I'd wanted to do that night was to come home, put my feet up, drink a beer, go to bed. Maybe, if I was really lucky, get laid. What I'd gotten instead was a moderately stoned, science-spouting scientist and practically catatonic FBI agent.

And a filthy fucking cat.

Of course, I didn't object to bringing a homeless animal in on a cold night. And, after the carnal delights Olivia and I shared after she led me to our room that night, I couldn't even in good conscience object to Walter getting her stoned. No, what I objected to was what had happened the next morning when I argued that, because we were rarely home in the first place, were often gone for days on end altogether, and were not likely to live much longer anyway, the best place for what sounded and looked like a motorized bag of bones was the local cat shelter.

When I'd said that, Olivia looked at me like I'd suggested Ella should be euthanized for bad behavior.

Like accomplished, reformed grifters, animals can intuit who is really in charge in any given social structure, so the cat latched on to Olivia with the adaptability of a virulent virus. And Olivia doted on it with nausea-inducing tenderness, so the unreasonable jealous-envy I felt toward it was actually more or less justified. And the creature (I flat-out refused to call the thing _Cat_) flaunted her superior position on the Dunham-Bishop food-chain right to my face. She was possessively besotted with Olivia, and she more than tolerated Walter, who, like a high-chair bound toddler, launched endless streams of food to the floor for her to hoover up. But she only hissed and spat at me when she felt I got too close to Olivia, or when I attempted to reclaim _my_ pillow from _my_ bed by swiping her away (gently, of course) from her perch at night.

In a pair of universes filled with stray cats,naturally, the lesbian one with a rabid crush on Olivia showed up on _my_ doorstep.

Come to think of it, the cat was a lot like someone else I knew: needy and controlling in the extreme, but convinced she wasn't. The untouchable green-gold of the cat's eyes didn't undercut the comparison either.

I suppose it wasn't really surprising that Olivia should appoint herself defender of homeless strays. She was particularly good as champion of lost children as well. Of course, hairless, pale-faced little boys didn't try to usurp my place in Olivia's bed, so I was bound to be a little more tolerant of them.

Olivia put the last dry glass into the cabinet and lowered herself from her toes. She knelt again to scoop up the cat who commenced purring at the attention like her life depended on it.

The animal gazed up at Olivia adoringly and then lowered her face to blink at me from under half-lidded eyes, her purring taking on a rhythm that could only be described as gloating.

"I thought we might try upstairs," Olivia finally said, bending to nuzzle behind the cat's ears with her nose. She bestowed a heart-melting smile on it, murmured something into her neck, and then lowered her to the floor.

"Mmm," I said, noncommittally, averting my eyes from the feline-human love-fest to toss the dishtowel across the rack to dry overnight. I couldn't tell from Olivia's tone if she was anxious or adamant about her decision.

I was curious, though. Frankly, based on what had happened in the lab on Friday, I wasn't really counting on the experience being terribly pleasant, and it wasn't exactly something I was looking forward to. In truth, my original question had been more a poor excuse for small talk than anything else, since where we decided to do, well, whateveryoucallit, was nearly inconsequential to me (I didn't even have words to _describe_ the events of my life anymore, never mind explain them), but Olivia's hesitancy to answer clued me in to the fact that location clearly mattered to her for some inexplicable reason and she'd obviously given the matter a lot of thought.

Olivia moved to stand in front of me where I was leaning, legs crossed, ass against the sink. She kicked at my crossed ankles a little with her toe until I uncrossed them and she stepped between my open legs, wrapping her arms around my waist, leaning against me to rest her ear on my sternum.

When I put my palm to the back of her head, smoothing her hair down, she said, "I thought it might be more . . ." she shifted a little against me, hesitating over her next words. "More comfortable," she finished.

"More private?" I prodded, and I felt a little nod against my chest.

"Walter usually isn't there." She squeezed my waist a little with her arms. "It's usually just you and me."

"Okay," I said, still unable to parse her mood. If I didn't know better I'd have thought she was embarrassed. "You think that'll make it easier?" I asked.

"Maybe," was all she said.

"It's safe there," she added a few minutes later, as if that somehow might clear things up for me.

I leaned back and looked at her, propped on my chest. She felt my movement and I was surprised to see her shift and meet my eyes. She didn't look upset. Uncomfortable maybe, somewhat unsure, but not agitated.

I pushed the hair back from the side of her face with a hand and asked, "Is this something I'm allowed to ask about, or is it supposed to be a surprise?"

She smiled a little, but it didn't quite cover the unease in her eyes. "You can ask," she murmured absently looking very far out over the edge of my shoulder, "but I'm pretty sure I don't know the answer. It's not like I've done this before."

"But you know something," I observed. "Something you're not sure if you want to tell me."

Her startled eyes snapped back to my face.

"You don't just keep me around for my good looks and winning personality you know," I reminded her, "By now I think I know a little something about you Olivia,"

She dropped her eyes from mine. Now she really did look embarrassed.

She fiddled nervously with the hem of my shirt, pleating the edge in her thumb and forefinger and then dropping it so she could brush the edges of her knuckles along the folds she'd just made.

"There's a place I go," she finally said after a while. "Where I start. Most of the time, anyway."

"Yeah," I encouraged her.

"It's, uh," the pleats were getting thinner now, faster. "It's um— it's a field of white tulips."

Yeah," I repeated, covering her hand with my own, stilling it, in what I hoped was a soothing gesture.

Her head jerked up to look at me. "That's what you have to say about that? 'Yeah?'"

"Did you want me to say something else?"

She looked puzzled. "Well, it's just like the Observer and Cassandra said."

"I know."

She actually looked a little disappointed. She dropped the hem of my shirt and leaned against me again, putting her ear to my chest and said, "I thought you should know."

"Okay," I said, and I put my hand on the back of her head again, letting my fingers comb her hair a little.

I'd pretty much gathered that the Field of White Tulips the Observer mentioned before the hotel room exploded was meaningful to Olivia somehow. I wish I could say it was because I was focused on her so intently that I guessed it from the alert twitch of her body when he'd mentioned it. That was part of it, but in a way I couldn't explain even to myself, I had just _known_ it was important to her—possibly to us—though I didn't permit my mind to wander that far very often.

It felt a lot like a memory I was supposed to have. And, because I was _supposed_ to have it, I suddenly did, even though I couldn't recall the actual details. And after it belonged to me, I had to concentrate very hard to remember that the Field of White Tulips didn't actually have significance in my own personal cache of memories. It felt a lot like falsely recalling events from a night you're tanked out of your mind and someone else explains them to you the following morning. After a while, after you've heard the stories enough, you wrongly remember being there, falsely recall those events, and they take on a significance for you they have no business having, even though you can't quite get them out of your memories.

"When do you want to do this?" I finally asked when she didn't offer anything else.

"The sooner, the better, I think."

"Tonight?"

She nodded.

"Should we at least tell Walter we're doing this?" I asked.

She snorted a little against my chest with black humor. "He already knows." She squeezed her arms a little tighter around my waist. "I don't know how he knows, but he knows."

She disentangled her arms from around my body and pulled away, taking a step back. She wandered over to the other counter and studied the remainder of the loaf of bread sitting on the cutting board.

I tried not to wince at the memory as she selected a half-stale piece and gnawed on yesterday's experiment with buckwheat and millet before heading for the cabinet with the liquor. After she opened it, she turned to smile at me, a curved crust of bread dangling from her mouth.

She held up the tube with the 30 year-old Oban in it then said around a mouthful of crust, "About time."

I gave a benignant bow with my head. "Your wish . . . and all that."

She smiled really, really wide at me. The big smile that crinkled her eyes and nose appealingly, that I've only seen maybe three or four times since I've known her.

Smile still in place, she handed me the bottle to open while she reached up into the cabinet for the rocks glasses.

We sat at the kitchen table sipping our drinks.

Olivia studied her glass and then grinned even wider at me. For a moment her face looked so light and carefree I'd have gone to the extra effort twelve times over to get her to look at me like that again. If Olivia's current exuberance hinged on keeping good booze in the house, fuck it, I'd buy a distillery tomorrow.

Her smile was contagious. "What are you thinking about?" I asked, unable to keep my own grin from spreading across my mouth.

Her lips twitched. "I'm thinking about what I'm going to ask for next," she remarked.

I reached for the bottle and re-filled her glass and then my own. She put her hand up after I slid it on the table back toward her. "That's it for me. I want to be relaxed, not comatose."

I quirked an eyebrow at her. It took a hell of a lot more than two drinks to make Olivia "comatose" and we both knew it. Come to think of it, I'd never seen her consume enough to get to that state, but I didn't comment.

"So?" I prodded.

She shook her head at me, still smiling, though it had turned from cheerful to thoughtful. "I can't think of anything else I want." The light in her eyes dimmed a little. "Not that you and your great big bank account could buy me, anyway."

Her description of my bank account sounded lewd enough to put Jenna Haze out of work, though the tone was at odds with the bruised places in the backs of her eyes. I batted my eyelashes at her with mock-modesty. "You flatter me with your talk about my great, big bank account."

She just shook her head at me and drained the remains of her glass in one swallow.

I really didn't want to go upstairs and do this. Not right now, when the mood was so light and the scotch was making my insides so warm and Olivia was looking at me like I'd only seen her look at very fine and well-honed weapons, with a mixture of possessiveness, heat, and fondness.

I didn't want to give that up. Not for anything.

And certainly not for another chance to surf the manic wave in my mind that crested right at the moments in my life when I'd been most horrible and hurtful.

I held it together when the little life I'd carved out for myself was turned inside out when Olivia coerced me back to Boston. I survived when Olivia crawled into my head and started reading my mind. I didn't lose it completely when her alternate replaced Olivia and I didn't notice the difference. And I even stuck around when it became clear that I was going to have to sacrifice myself in the machine to preserve everything I loved, with the full knowledge I wouldn't be around to enjoy it.

But if I was going to spend the last few weeks I had left on this earth re-experiencing my faults, weaknesses, and failings, re-living every blunder, every injury I'd done to wound someone I cared about, then I wasn't going to be able to handle that. Even I had a line that couldn't be crossed—and it turned out that was it.

"It won't be like that," Olivia said, even though I hadn't spoken. She leaned a little toward me, hovering over our empty glasses. "Not if you're with me and there aren't any of Walter's drugs."

And, just like that, our moment of glowing contentment screeched to a halt.

I glared at her. "You really gotta stop that."

It was one damned thing for her to crawl around unattended in my mind and then have the good manners to keep her discoveries to herself. It was quite another for her to openly conduct conversations we weren't even _having_.

The tips of Olivia's mouth lifted, "Would you believe me if I told you I wasn't digging?'

I snorted and shook my head at her. "No."

Her eyes found mine. "I wasn't. After all this time I think I know a _little_ something about you," she said, repeating my earlier words back to me. Something I couldn't quite cipher dusted the light teasing in her voice.

I watched her face carefully when she stood and came around the edge of the table a little closer to me.

She took another step, this time toward the door, and held out her hand to me. She was still standing far enough away that I had to reach to touch her. "C'mon," she said, "You'll see. I'll make sure you're okay, just like you do to me."

Her voice was a little strained, thick and heavy with those blurry vowels of hers I loved so much that suggested she'd leaned English as a child abroad, probably in a military school somewhere. I raised my eyebrows and tilted my head at her in surprise. Olivia never even hinted that she'd noticed a large part of my job was to keep things "okay" for her, and that it started long before either one of us knew I had any special powers to do so.

She wiggled her fingertips at me, still stretched in my direction. "You'll see," she repeated.

Almost against my will I stood and slid my fingers into hers, and the moment so closely resembled what we'd done in my mind the other night I had to gulp to breathe.

She didn't say anything as she led me into the living room. We wished Walter good night and headed upstairs to the bedroom. Only when we were in our room did she turn to face me. She started to unbutton my shirt with distracted fingers, her mind obviously elsewhere.

I put my hands on top of hers and pressed them still so they flattened against my chest.

"I got this," I said, but I didn't move to undress, just stood there with my hands covering hers.

Olivia glanced at my face, studying me in that searching way she has, like she could discover something hidden in my eyes even I didn't know or understand. Then her eyes slid away, chagrined and embarrassed, and looked down at our hands tucked into one another on my sternum. Fair lashes skating along the curve of her cheeks, she contemplated our hands carefully as if she were trying to reach a decision.

Finally, she rotated both her wrists so our fingers tangled awkwardly together for a moment and said, "I think you should know how to do this—to get to the field—because it's safe." Her voice sounded both anxious and firm.

I shrugged like it didn't matter because I could feel how tense she was. "Okay," I said. "I don't understand, but I believe you."

She gave a little smile and slid her hands from mine to let me undress.

She stepped away and worked on her own clothes while I slid out of mine until we were both stripped to our underwear. She smiled at me almost sweetly before heading around to her side of the bed.

She gave me a little push toward the bed when she passed by and I reluctantly moved to sit down on its side. I kept my feet on the ground and my back to her, but I conceded by turning my shoulders so I could see her. Olivia sank to the mattress behind to me, propped herself on an elbow and patted my pillow, inviting me to lay down with her. When I did, she shuffled over so she was right next to me, rolled over onto her side and propped her cheek on my shoulder, before she brushed her cool hand along the left side of my waist.

We lay there quietly for a long time, before Olivia finally scooted up so her face was even with mine and we were sharing my pillow.

She lifted her hand on my face and tugged so my chin turned toward her. "Can you find me?" she asked.

I rolled a little so I could see her better and looked her in the eye. "Is that a trick question?" I asked, only half-teasing, because you just never know with Olivia. I could always feel her, even if I couldn't reach her or tell anything specific.

When she didn't say anything I leaned across the small space that separated us and nudged my face into the heated spot between her neck and her shoulder. "I can always find you Olivia." I whispered into the warm stretch of skin, in all earnestness.

She wrapped her arms around my upper body, the coolness of her palms against each side of my neck mimicking the cool brush of her mind against mine. "Follow me," she ordered.

And, amazingly, that was all it took.

I had the strangest sensation of skimming across the expanse of something, fast enough I could see the outlines of objects smearing along the edges of my peripheral vision, even as I was still profoundly aware of the warmth of Olivia's body pressed to me, her cool hands cradling my head, the rhythmic rise and fall of her chest against mine.

It wasn't a bad sensation, but it wasn't exactly pleasant either. I had the feeling of being dragged along on someone else's ride, no will of my own, no control over my own body, over my own consciousness.

I chafed at the thought, trying to re-align my will in the mass of Olivia swirling around me. The part of me that was still locked onto my body, lying alongside Olivia in our bed shifted and I felt her grip on me tighten.

_Later_, was all she thought, and I took that to mean I shouldn't try to shake her off for the moment. Not until I learned to stand on my own.

I felt her arms around me relax, even as I had the thought, and her relief lapped inside my consciousness. I felt her loosen her hold on me somewhat, confident I wouldn't wander far.

The instant I felt her recede though, I panicked, suddenly lost and alone, no anchor to bring me back, no way to trace my way home.

I could hear myself whining, feel my body trembling back on the bed at home, even though my mind felt far, far away.

"S'okay," I felt her say and I think she actually said it as she wrapped herself around me again, "I got you."

I reveled in the way she surrounded me now, a mooring that fastened me back to our bodies on the bed, now a world away.

Olivia was everywhere around me and time seemed to stand still. I was no longer uncomfortable, no longer anywhere specific, but . . . something, somewhere else.

_None of this makes any sense_, I thought.

It was hard to tell what was thinking and what was talking anymore. The separation between mind and body was so unclear, now as fractured as the boundaries between our consciousnesses.

I felt Olivia's amusement. Maybe she snorted, although I might have imagined it. The lines between the two had been practically erased.

_No shit_, she said. _Welcome to my world_.

_There's more than just us here though_, she added, and I felt her mind still even when she was in the middle of the thought.

And, somehow, I suddenly possessed my body again. Or, at least, I _felt_ like I was back in it, even though I could still feel it laying on the bed back home.

We were standing in a dark, open space, maybe outside somewhere.

"There," she said, definitely talking now. She pointed.

Olivia was in her body now too, standing next to me, her shoulder leaning just a little in my direction, just like she did as we trudged through every miserable case, every wretched day. When I followed the line of Olivia's pointing finger, I saw a field of white tulips just across the way from us.

"Huh," I said, a little ridiculously.

Olivia shook her head. "Not that," she said. "There."

And suddenly, like Olivia's will was action, we fast-forwarded so we were in the field we were distant from a moment before, now thirty yards or so away from two children, seated side-by-side, costumed in an eerie blue light that seemed to issue from everywhere and nowhere at once.

"Uhhh." I said.

Olivia's amusement came to me, thick and strong again.

"Give me a break," I whined, even though she didn't say anything. "It's not like there's vocabulary for this."

We made our way closer in an instant, but the children didn't notice us. It was like they were projected from somewhere else far away, running in an endless, timeless loop.

Olivia was a little ahead of me and I felt her freeze and suck in a breath.

I was nearly on top of her, and a moment later I knew why she'd reacted the way she did.

Like I had crossed an invisible line somewhere, as soon as we got closer to the children I was suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of helplessness. Of isolation, fear, and confusion so heavy I felt myself losing Olivia in the engulfing mass of it.

I screamed. Or maybe I just thought I screamed, and less than a second later I was sucked back into my body, panting and sweating and trembling on the bed, Olivia's arms thankfully still wrapped around me.

I was too terrified to open my eyes for fear that Olivia would be gone, no longer next to me.

Only when I felt her body shift against mine and she panted my name, did I open my eyes.

I leaned back and saw her, just as she was when we left. Same face, same wary eyes.

Of course, given the circumstances of my life, that hardly constituted sufficient proof. I buried my face back in her neck. Same smell.

I dipped my head so my I could dig my face a little deeper into her neck, inhaling the spot behind her ear that was thick with her scent, tasting the skin there with my tongue.

When she tasted the same and I was reassured it was her, I nearly wept with relief.

"You all right?" she asked.

"Fuck," I barely managed.

"Mmmm," she agreed. "Intense."

"Shit," I said, still unable to produce anything much beyond middle-school vocabulary. "Is it always like that?"

I felt her shrug. Of course it was. And, of course, Olivia took the wrenching around of her own consciousness in complete stride.

I was suddenly really, really glad that I _couldn't_ do this on my own. "You think that place is _safe_!" I asked incredulously. "Were we _in_ the same place?"

"It's not usually like that" she said, "It would have gotten better just a second later but we didn't stay long enough, I think, because you're still learning.

I shifted restlessly in her arms and I felt her iron grip on me loosen a little. I couldn't yet process all my feelings, but I felt so . . . so . . . _empty_. "You feel so far away now," I fussed, not quite recognizing what I was saying.

When Olivia didn't reply, I added, "I know how crazy that sounds, but it's true."

She shifted a little in my arms to get comfortable and reached up to twist her fingers in the hair on the back of my head, petting me soothingly, a lot like she did the cat.

I was so upset it didn't even bother me.

I still felt empty. How could I miss her when she was right here? Compared to the closeness from earlier, she felt as distant as those children had, even when we were right on top of them.

I didn't like the feeling one bit.

"What was that?" I finally pulled it together enough to ask.

Olivia stiffened a little with some emotion I was unable to track, since, in contrast to our profound closeness a few moments ago, she now felt very, very distant.

"I think," Olivia paused, suddenly uncharacteristically delicate. "I think that was us."

"Really?"

"It feels—" There was a lengthy pause. "Familiar," she finally settled on.

"But not remembered?" I asked.

"No," she said. "Just familiar."

I knew exactly what she was talking about. It was suddenly too much. I ached for her. She deserved better than this. At that moment I'd have done anything, given _anything,_ to ensure she'd have something better than this endless parade of complete insanity.

I dug even further into her body, striving in vain to recapture our earlier intimacy.

She winced against me.

"I'm so sorry," I told her, one palm around her waist, the other cradling the back of her head. "I wish you knew how much I wish things were different."

She reached up to stroke my bicep, now anchored around her neck.

"I know," she said, as usual turning the tables on me, so that _I_ was the one being comforted, "I know."

Long minutes passed.

"Still," she finally said, "that wasn't bad. And a lot better than Walter's drugs."

"Much better," I agreed, exhausted and struggling against the pull of sleep.

I slid my leg between hers to secure her more firmly against my body, still trying to preempt the loss of our closeness, the way our bodies interfered with our connection.

Limbs still tangled and folded around each other like rag dolls tossed in a corner, Olivia and I slept.

I can't remember the last time I dreamed. The last time I slept deeply enough _to_ dream. It's been more years than I can count.

That night I dreamed the same thing again and again, an endless loop, so luminous and strong it stretched and fitted itself until it was inside of me: a field of white tulips, the drift of a virtually imperceptible breeze, the curl of a narrower hand inside my own, and a cell-deep contentment that can only be felt after coming home after being adrift on a desolate and empty sea.

* * *

><p>Break. Break. Break.<p>

Break. Break. Break.

Break. Break. Break.

Break. Break. Break.

* * *

><p>Break. Break. Break.<p>

Break. Break. Break.

Break. Break. Break.

Break. Break. Break.

* * *

><p>I squinted in the harsh, white winter light, scanning the distance, looking directly into the dumpy dwelling in South Boston and into the narrow spaces between the empty shells of houses until my eyes dried out and started to cramp with the strain.<p>

I wondered idly if meth-cookers looked for these dilapidated properties on purpose, or if everyone even remotely decent immediately moved out as soon as they moved in.

All at once a head popped up inside the large window in the front of the house. The glass from the window was long gone and now only plastic covered the wide window. Except for one corner where the plastic had loosened from the duct tape that held it in place to flap in the breeze, it was the only thing standing between the residents and the harsh elements of Boston's winter. I barely had time to register that it was a person with a weapon of some sort and then to train my pistol on the bastard's head before I felt something heavy and solid—likely human—ram into me from behind and shove me to the pavement.

My attacker and I both hit the ground with a _humph_ and I immediately started struggling against the heavy weight on my back holding me with an iron death-grip around the waist and chest. On the ground beneath me, now no less than a quarter of an inch from my face, I smelled urine over motor oil over vomit.

It didn't improve my mood.

I tried to twist, but the heaviest part of the person was pinning my hips to the wet, grimy, and pitted blacktop behind the cover of a parked van, appropriately dumpified with rusted-out holes and missing windows by the Boston PD evidence team.

"Dammnit," I swore, and I heard my tackler answer me in kind, the heaving breaths from the chest pinning me to the ground in a most damp and uncomfortable way. I had just been about to take that bastard down when my aim was interrupted.

"What the hell were you doing?" Peter hissed in my ear.

I elbowed him in the ribs, only slightly mollified when he grunted at the jab. A second later my anger really roared to life when I realized the sharp end of my elbow had only made him shift harder against me and tighten his steel-armed grip on my waist.

He wasn't even supposed to be here. A call had come out right after lunch for all hands to assist Boston PD with a standoff at a meth lab in South Boston connected to a major drug trafficking organization. Last I checked, Peter had been safely in the lab where he and Walter were conducting tests on unknown bits of the machine, something Walter had completely refused to do before now. It was still a serious bone of contention between the two of them. I'd been on my way from the lab to the Field Office to hand in a revised report on the hotel explosion when the call for assistance came. It was so rare that I got asked to play Regular-FBI that I figured I might actually be needed, so I veered South from the Federal Building to help.

Broyles must have gotten caught up somewhere. I'd arrived just after a pair of officers who had obviously been eagerly awaiting the FBI cavalry and the HRT team and their sniper. I'd taken position huddled behind the van with a couple of officers who looked too young and inexperienced to be in the field for my taste.

As soon as I did, their frightened faces and obvious relief at the backup made me miss Peter and his accomplished, unflappable calm with something that might have been pain.

Now I took a deep breath to steady my temper, conscious of the other officers huddled behind the van, mouths now agape, staring at Peter tumbled on top of me, looking as shocked as if we'd just done a blackface rendition of "Mammy."

"I was about to take out this fuckhead of a suspect so we can save the half-dozen toddlers and children in the house," I remarked to him, pleased to hear the steady, gin-martini dryness of my voice.

Peter didn't say anything, just shifted his weight to the right, freeing me enough that I could lean with him and follow with my eyes as he pointed with his left hand around the corner of the van, over in the direction of a copse of bushes. It took me a second to see what he was pointing at, and then I saw it: a slight movement behind the thick, leafless sticks of the bushes.

A man. With a scoped-rifle. An M21 from the looks of it, which was more than unusual since, as a rule, criminals prefer cheap and disposable weapons. The shooter was perched behind the sticks, the tip of the rifle pointed at the space I had just been leaning out of to take aim and the man in the house.

Well, shit.

"And _that_ fuckhead of a suspect would have taken you out at the same time." Peter growled, so close to my ear there was no way anyone else could have heard it, the dryness in _his_ voice draining all the vermouth from my martini in one swallow.

Peter's head was turned unashamedly into my neck, the back of his head shielding our faces from the openly interested looks of the local officers. He moved to slide off of me, but not before he took a brief second to press his mouth to the space behind my ear. He wasn't so fast that I missed the feel of the wet tip of his tongue as it tasted my skin before he retreated.

He scrambled off of me, groping the sides of my breasts and ass on the way up so skillfully that even I wasn't sure if it was an accident or not, and then crouched next to me to give me a hand up so I could return to my squatted position behind the van next to him.

When I glanced at Peter's FBI-issue vest and the heavy case he brought with him, eyebrows raised in question, he shrugged and mouthed "Broyles" to me.

Peter was crouched with his back to the officers, but I could see them staring at us. They appeared not at all interested in the criminal we were here for in the first place because the Peter & Olivia Show was clearly far more compelling.

I scowled at the pair of them staring most obviously, and they ducked their heads in unison to study the street. Another pair shifted uncomfortably, and a partner-less third officer, the only one who looked like he actually might have been out of the Academy for more than a few weeks, cleared his throat and scrambled around Peter and me to look where Peter had pointed.

Meanwhile, Peter was pointing at the case.

When I took a second to inspect it, and realized what it was, I grinned at him, all at once happy to see him. "That's what I'm talking about," I praised him.

Peter wasn't looking at me though. His eyes were scanning the distance around the edges of the van.

I reached for the case eagerly, scraping the asphalt with it when I pulled it toward me. I opened it and ran my fingers over the long-range rifle, its pieces cradled in foam, for a few seconds before I began to assemble it.

"Can you make that shot?" Peter asked, turning around. His eyes flicked uncomfortably between my busy hands and intent face as I assembled the weapon.

Something in his tone stilled my hands. I stopped what I was doing for a minute and caught his eye. He looked a little uncertain and a lot guilty.

Of course he read the report I'd been required to file after I came back from the Other Side: the one that explained how I'd retained my alternate's marksmanship, along with a whole host of other memories that I'd really prefer to live without. Naturally, we never talked about it—why would we? But I could tell Peter hated having to depend on something that resulted from my violation on the Other Side.

Yes, well, desperate times . . . and all that. It would be nice if I lived in a world where I didn't have to wrest every uncomfortable advantage from this God-bullied life of mine, but I did, and that was the way it was. Frankly, my now approaching-preternatural skill with the weapons I had a life-long love-affair with made the abuses on the Other Side almost worth it.

Almost.

That facility was wasted on my alternate anyway, who I knew with the certainty that only comes from memory, had only a shockingly casual interest in the weapons. She hadn't had my childhood experiences with them, so to her they were necessary tools designed to accomplish specific ends, not trustworthy companions who ensured safety for the things I was charged with protecting.

It was a damned waste, if you asked me. And, when it comes to weapons especially, I hate waste.

I caught Peter's eye with my own. "I'm fine," I said. His mouth quirked a little at the empty assurance I usually used to indicate I was anything but. I dipped my head a little to get a good look at his face and tipped my own lips in rely. Then I reached out to put a hand on his coat-covered arm. "I'll _be_ fine," I repeated. The change in emphasis seemed to reassure him somewhat.

I finished assembling the rifle while Peter groped along my hip for my holster. I finished tightening the scope and put my free hand on his, stilling his fingers just as they curled around the butt of my 1911. I squeezed his fingers and gave him a small smile before moving my hand so he could unsnap and un-holster the weapon. He checked the clip, flipped off the safety and nodded at me, stepping to the side so I could move directly behind the wheel and bumper of the van.

A final glance over my shoulder confirmed that Peter was behind me, his right hand curled on top of his left with the pistol ready. I shuffled a half step from behind the van, squatted on one knee, tucked the stock to my cheek, aimed at the man behind the bushes and fired with the kind of Zen-serenity I only ever experienced when behind the sight of a weapon.

The one shot was all it took. Long-Range-Rifle-Dealer slumped to the ground and the teams who had arrived in the interim advanced on the house to protected positions a little closer on the front lawn.

The shooter inside the house must have seen his companion go down because now the shots rang out rapidly from inside the house's darkened front room. I closed my eyes for a second and listened to the ring of the shots, trying to track with my ears where they were coming from and where they were headed, though I knew it was futile. With all the structures in the area, the report of the shot would echo endlessly, making it impossible to ascertain much of anything about the shooter.

I'd have to leave my cover-position in order to get a shot, which wasn't exactly desirable, but there was no way around it. I wanted to get a better sense of where I was aiming before I made myself a human target.

Usually I fight my alternate's memories, which, if I allow them, fit so seamlessly against my own that I always have to wrestle and pin them into a back corner of my mind if I want to function at all. But I really needed every advantage now, so I let go and they flooded me, filling in all the empty spaces their presence already carved inside my mind.

Peter shuffled a little behind me and took a deep breath while I raised myself up a little in preparation to come out from behind the van. He was standing so close to me his elbow dug into my ribs a little.

He'd head out first to help with cover fire and I'd kneel right next to him. I could hear him thinking it as clearly as if he'd said it, and if I hadn't been so busy avoiding being punctured with flying lead, I would have stumbled a little at how clear and present Peter was in my mind at that moment. It was utterly unreal all the identities swirling around in my consciousness right then. I marveled that we all fit inside me and I still managed to breathe.

I didn't have time to spare a glance for Peter, though I would have stared at him gape-mouthed if he hadn't already been sliding out from behind the van's cover.

Peter squeezed off a round just to keep the shooter wary. The shooter returned the favor from inside the house's living room.

I stepped around the side of the van and kneeled as Peter ducked to a squat partially in front of me, trying to both make himself a smaller target and shield me with his body as best he could around the 24 inches of steel barrel. Ignoring the increasingly persistent humming in my ears, I raised the rifle, took a deep breath, and pulled the trigger.

My first shot missed, and two more shots came from inside the house a second later. They went wild, nowhere near Peter and me. The buzzing in my mind intensified, and with it came an almost preternatural elevation of my senses. I felt like I could see and hear with everyone's eyes and ears on the block. I waited passively, letting it all in, just as I'd let the Other Olivia in moments before, waiting as it all settled into the corners of my mind. Loudest of all was the thick spread of Peter's almost suffocating calm as he quietly rattled calculations of angle and distance of the bullets in his mind in an attempt to keep us out of harm's way.

After that final shot, the edges of my vision dimmed and bowed out from around me. Something in my chest shifted and expanded. Instantly I remembered being inside the house at a time when both shooters were still in there. They were talking loudly, flipping furniture over and the inside shooter handed the outside one his rifle to take with him behind the bushes before crouching himself behind the overturned sofa in the opposite corner of the room.

With all my faculties on high-alert and now the memory of something I had by no means actually witnessed, I suddenly just _knew_ where the indoor shooter was. Even though I couldn't actually see him in the shadows of the darkened living room, I knew his location as surely as I knew that of my own hand—I could feel the outline of his body, cutting the air around him in the shadows of the house.

There was no way I could have explained it to anyone. Not even to Peter.

I exhaled and stroked the trigger one last time. There was a thud from inside the house and then all was silent.

Peter and I scrambled back to cover behind the van. A gaggle of FBI agents had assembled to assist the local officers in the interim, and the leader from the team closest to the house crept across the lawn to the porch, followed by her team. She and her partner crept up the side-steps to the porch and approached the door. Still, there was nothing but silence inside the house.

The buzzing in my head abruptly stopped.

Suddenly, the cry of an infant pierced the atmosphere that was thick with tension, the sound reminding me to drag more oxygen into my lungs.

A female voice called out from inside the house. "We're coming out!" Her cry was as thin and plaintive as the infant's.

"We're not armed!" she added. A second later, she waved a hand in front of the shattered window.

The door cracked open at first, and then, when nothing happened, swung wide. A moment later, a teenage girl came out. She was thin and drawn and carrying the crying infant. Other children trailed out after her, three of them, none looking like they were yet school age.

The team swarmed the teenager and the children.

A while later the girl and the toddlers were checked over in the paramedic that arrived with the fire department on the scene. The teams had swept the house, discovering a large meth lab and the bodies of several other cookers who had died in the explosion that had brought law enforcement to the scene.

In the meantime I disassembled the rifle and fitted its parts back into the spaces designed for them in the case. Peter had disappeared somewhere over near the victims, probably working his interpersonal mojo on the poor teenager who surely had never seen charm (or kindness) of that magnitude in her whole miserable existence. Broyles approached me after he disengaged himself from the other AIC's who had swarmed to the scene shortly before I took out the criminals firing on us.

Broyles had just come to stand next to me, off to the side where I was next to a car, parked a fair bit outside the scene. I didn't really want to be a part of the brouhaha that would be the next phase of the investigation. A bit of what might have been pride was etched in his face as he came to stand next to me. But he never quite got around to saying anything because suddenly Peter appeared out of nowhere.

He roared, and in an instant he was up in Broyles' face—no mean feat since Broyles probably had a couple of inches on him—something Peter wasn't at all used to.

"What the fuck?" He was yelling, loud enough that I looked around to see if anyone else had noticed. "Olivia isn't on regular duty—she's on special assignment," Peter spit into Broyles' face. "She has no business chasing after pimps and drug dealers."

Fortunately, no one else seemed to have heard. In the distance I could see all the other officers and agents bent to their own tasks at the scene.

Broyles didn't move a muscle or say a word. If anything he leaned into Peter a little bit and blinked at him, face passive.

"_Mister_ Bishop," Broyles finally said, emphasizing Peter's civilian status with stress on the one word. A number of emotions flickered across Broyles' face, and I realized he was holding onto his own temper by a very fine thread.

"Agent Dunham just saved the lives of five people, four of them children. She did an excellent job today. Would you have it any different?"

Peter deflated a little, backing away from Broyles a tiny bit. But then he straightened his shoulders and lifted his head and said, "Of course, not. But we can't risk it. You _know_ that."

Broyles pressed his lips together and stared Peter down. "I understand Mr. Bishop. It was a mistake that she was here." When Peter just continued glaring at him, he repeated, "She was called by mistake," and then he waited until Peter jerked his head very slightly in agreement.

Broyles nodded, pleased they understood each other, and headed back to the group of AIC's standing on the lawn.

What the hell was that about? Now I was pissed. Why Peter felt like reading the riot act, to _Broyles_ of all people, was totally beyond me. I whirled on him, anger blazing from my face. "What the hell is wrong with you?" I demanded.

"Olivia, please don't answer those calls anymore. It's too dangerous, you know that," he said, his voice noticeably softening to a plea.

I leaned into him, jabbing my two first fingers into his coat-padded chest, congratulating my self-control when it was only two fingers I used to jab him, "You don't get to make that call," I blazed at him, sensing I was overreacting from the dumbfounded look on his face "I don't give a fuck if we are bound together forever," I spit back at him. "You don't get to make those decisions."

I was getting angrier with every word that fled from my lips. I knew I was being juvenile, that my reaction exceeded Peter's ill-timed protectiveness, but my senses still felt like they were on fire and I couldn't quite stop myself.

Peter backed a step away from me. He shook his head at me dazedly, looking a little shell-shocked. "Hell, Olivia, I wasn't ordering you. I was _asking_." He threw his hand out in front of him in a surrendering gesture. "We both have the kind of job that puts us in harm's way and it would be stupid to demand anything else of each other. You think I'd ask you to be someone else _now_?" He looked utterly flabbergasted, not to mention offended.

His voice lowered a little but didn't lose its urgency. "You've just got to be smarter—I'm only asking you not to take _unnecessary_ risks."

I glared at him harder, my jaw tight. Then, before my eyes, Peter's temper shimmered and then snapped.

"This isn't about us or what I want," he bit out taking a step toward me. I knew I deserved the icy blast of his cold, shuttered look. "Cassandra and the Observer made it clear that I can't run the machine by myself. Not and live long enough to accomplish anything."

He scowled at me and leaned closer still, face darkening. "If some slimy meth-head puts a bullet between your ears we're _all_ screwed. Even if she is capable, I'd never let the other Olivia into my head, even for this." The venom in his voice was thick. "I'd let both the worlds burn before I'd do that."

I blinked at him in surprise. Peter never mentioned the other Olivia. Ever. And neither did I. It was a mutual, unspoken agreement between us that she was and always would remain She Who Is Never To Be Named. It had always been a given between us that keeping our own secrets was part of the deal. And the things that happened to each of us while I was trapped on the Other Side topped the list of our personal secrets. I didn't want to know and Peter wouldn't say. So we'd put it away and pretended it wasn't there with a skill that was becoming our trademark. My alternate was the madwoman in the attic of our twisted Gothic romance, and it looked as if a convenient fire was unlikely to be the deus ex machina to take her out of our plot-line.

"Of course I've considered she might also have your abilities," he said grudgingly, studying his hands carefully like all our answers might be written in the lines of their cold-chapped skin. "How could I not?"

Then he forced himself to meet my eyes. What I saw in his, believe it or not, shocked me more than anything else that had happened that day. His eyes were almost kind, compassion layered over fathomless regret. "I could never let her in like that though" he confessed.

I didn't think I could be any more surprised that day, but, as usual, Peter managed to ride roughshod right over the line of our unspoken agreements. He moved suddenly and pulled me hard into his chest, arms so tight I was breathless, burying his lips in the hair on the top of my head, blatantly ignoring his long-held knowledge that I didn't like to be touched, let alone manhandled like this, in a public forum.

"I couldn't do that," he muttered. "Ever. Not now, after—. . ." he said, and I felt him shudder a little against me.

My phone trilled in my pocket, muffled by the thick fabric of both of our coats smashed together. My anger thinned and evaporated like a puddle after a summer shower. I let the phone ring for a few seconds and then, with a little smile at Peter, whose eyes I couldn't quite bring myself to meet, I unwrapped my arms from around him, backed away, and reached for my phone.

By the time I fished it out, though, its ringing had stopped. A second later, Peter's phone started to ring. We shared a quick look and he dug into his pocket.

He showed me that it was the lab calling first, before he accepted the call and raised the phone to his ear.

He listened for a second, nodding absently, before he said, "Walter— Walter, slow down."

His face darkened as he listened to Walter's words, his eyes shifting from my face and back to the concrete ground a few times.

"Okay . . . " he tried to interrupt, but evidently Walter was on a roll. "Okay, Walter." He nodded a bit more vigorously this time.

"Walter!" Peter finally snapped, "We'll be right there, okay? Walter? We're on our way."

Peter looked at me as he cut the connection and a little of the light in his eyes faded. "Walter thinks he's figured out what the machine is for and what we have to do once I'm inside of it."

Peter slid his phone back into his pocket, and I wordlessly turned and headed for my car.


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary**: Olivia comes back. Olivia and Peter save the world. Again.

**Pairings**: Peter/Olivia

**Rating**: M: Only a very little in this chapter, but definitely elsewhere and certainly to come. You have been warned.

**Disclaimer**: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.

**Completed**: D-nd near!

**Spoilers**: AU after early season 3 (more or less around _Do Shapeshifters Dream of Electric Sheep?). _Includes some elements of the early part of Season 3, but no spoilers beyond that.

**A/N/: **Would you look at that? I've been posting this story for over a year now!

**Writing Update:** Chapters 19 and 20 have been sent to beta. Chapter 21 is still undergoing revision. I can't promise when they will all be posted, but it should be fairly soon.

All due gratitude to my beta, starg8fans.

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><p><strong>Chapter 18<strong>

"The idea—about unity and wholeness—it got me to thinking," Walter said.

We were sitting in the lab, trying to understand Walter's excitement at his discovery of what Peter would do once he was in the machine. Of course as usual with Walter's plans, this was easier said than done, since none of us knew (or was likely to ever know until it actually happened) how Peter would do this, or how the device would interface with his body and mind.

"You can move through time. And Olivia can stop it," Walter pointed to each of us in turn. "These are the same processes, really, when you consider it."

"The worlds have intertwined themselves," Walter continued. "They run parallel to each other, and when they overlap or interact, disaster occurs.

"When I traveled to the Other Side to get Peter, I opened a door, a gateway between the worlds," Walter was practically panting with excitement, his hands flashing in the air, his voice doing that thing where he punctuated every other syllable extra-loud, like he was afraid we might not be able to hear him. "And when Belly and I trained the Cortexiphan children to see a way to the Other Side—even if Olivia was the only one able to travel there—that made the boundaries between the two even less stable still. And once the levee was breached, the two worlds tangled more and more. For years it's been doing this. They have to be disentangled, put back on their paths, and the opening between the two worlds sealed somehow."

Walter stepped between us and put a hand on Peter's forearm. "We know the machine interacts with you on a biological level, Peter. I suspect it interacts with you on a cognitive and emotional level as well because Cassandra and Elizabeth both believed, even if it's unclear if they were correct or not, that you would have to choose a side to survive. The problem, of course, is the choice. You could never make a choice that would consign one world to the ashes merely so the other can survive, Peter. It's not who you are. It's a zero-sum ethics game. You can't _make_ a right decision because there's no right decision to make."

Peter looked at Walter's face carefully. "No arguments here, Walter," he encouraged him.

"But you can't separate them. They can't _be_ separated, in any case. They already _are_ separate and one of them is dying, dragging the other along with it. I don't believe you can reunite them either. If you try to rectify the split the First People made I believe that elements of one will stamp out parts of the other, like Nina's snow-globes."

I stared at him uncomprehendingly while Walter waited impatiently for us to catch up. Peter wasn't providing any cues either. He just stared at Walter too, and I couldn't tell if it was because he understood completely and was overwhelmed, or if he thought Walter had helped himself to an extra slice of crazy that day.

Peter's face could be the same in either case.

Walter got tired of waiting and rummaged in the milk crate on the shelf underneath the lab table and reemerged with an open box of stale Red Vines.

He impatiently yanked one out of the package and wrinkled his nose at the hard unpliable vine.

"It's like this Red Vine," he said, elation making his voice a little louder. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Peter wince a little at Walter's volume.

"See the lines twisted along the side? They lay right up against one another."

When Peter and I still just stared at him, Walter huffed in frustration and rummaged in his food stash again, this time emerging with a tube of Pringles. He opened the tube and yanked out a stack of chips, half of which spilled onto the lab table in his impatience.

He picked up two unbroken ones and held them up. "Like these chips. See how they are curved?" He turned them so they were lying on top of each other, their curved edges fitting so they were flat against one another. "Each universe is curved like these chips. And right now, they're lying against each other, like this."

Walter studied our faces to make sure we were watching. "What they need to do is be like this," he flipped the chips so they were curved in opposite directions with only the edges meeting and the tips curved in opposite directions.

Peter ran a hand against his chin, trying, and mostly failing, to be patient, "That's great Walter, but how are we—I mean how am _I_—supposed to do that once I'm in the machine?" I took this as a sign that Walter's theory didn't make much sense.

Walter smiled at both of us, and for a moment he looked a little self-deprecating. "I think Olivia is going to stop time so you, Peter, can untangle the worlds."

When Peter didn't offer any objections, Walter continued explaining. "Olivia has the ability to stop time, just as the Observers said. It's the Cortexiphan, combined with her natural abilities. The same mechanism which makes her able to see the other universe, the paths between them, and identify the objects that do not belong in this one means that she already knows how they bend around one another. Not only can she cross between them, she can intuit the shape of each one," Walter curved his hands elegantly around the chips as if he were conducting the sounds of an unseen orchestra. "To see the shapes of the universe means that she will be able to stop them—"

"Or hold them steady," Peter finished for him. Peter's face had more creases in it than one of my work shirts after a long day of chasing down suspects. There wasn't a cotton blend in either universe that could keep a shirt wrinkle-free with my job.

Walter went on. "I've been thinking about it since the Observer told us Olivia had this ability. I didn't understand what it meant to actually stop time. And even if that was possible, I didn't understand how Olivia could do it."

Walter's smile was the one he reserved for when he'd figured out something very significant. "Until last Friday, Peter, when the two of you went back to a moment in time when you remember arguing with you mother. You moved through time, taking Olivia with you, but once there, your mind was incapable of doing anything else. As you travel through time, Peter, you need Olivia there to push that time back—keep it from swallowing you whole, or at the very least keep it from pulling you apart. That's what she does, Peter. Olivia makes it possible for you to get home."

For once, Peter didn't have a thing to say. And I wasn't about to interrupt them when they were working together.

"What does it mean to move through time?" Walter went on. "It means that linear time becomes no longer linear. It means that the beginning, the middle, the end, of any series of events no longer has the influence it once did. If you can always move through time, you can transcend it, and that means you can overcome it. It means it no longer matters. And if Olivia can stop time—. Well —stopping time is essentially the same skill as moving through it. In both cases, time loses the linear structure we attach to it and becomes fluid, circular, mutable—," Walter paused, uncharacteristically uncertain.

"Variable" Peter finished for him.

"So, I brought us back Friday night?" I asked. It wasn't the most intelligent question I ever asked, but I was so lost at this point I couldn't even formulate a coherent question.

When Peter didn't stop to give me the understanding nod and patient explanations of Walter's theories, I knew we were in trouble. Peter's explanations usually made me feel like a member of a particularly dim viewing audience, but at least they allowed me to marginally understand what I was getting myself into by supporting Walter's plans.

"I believe you did," Walter agreed. "Whatever it was you did in that instant here in the lab, when you called out my name, you brought the two of you back." His expression changed to glare at me sternly, "Only then did I realize that your abilities had progressed beyond, _far_ beyond what I was aware of. I do not think you would have made it home otherwise."

"But," I pleaded, "I don't _know_ what I did."

"Well, I don't either, my dear, but it seems to work. I think that you did it instinctively when you and Peter started intentionally working in each other's minds. Somehow, your abilities work best, most seamlessly and are most controlled with Peter there, so you can't help but do what you did. It's a survival instinct that's part of your own mind, and it's what keeps you and Peter safe."

Peter hadn't said a word. He just sat on the stool studying me like he'd never met me before.

"The universes can't occupy the same space and time and they can't be separated," Walter repeated. "You have to untangle them. Extricate them so the events and experiences that have wandered awry and to the Other Side are put back to where they belong."

Peter was stiff and still perched on the stool across from Walter.

"I don't know, Walter," Peter finally said. "I just don't know. It still doesn't explain exactly what it is I'll have to do." He looked at me. "Or what the consequences might be."

"What might the consequences be?" I asked.

Peter just shrugged at me. "Nothing we could predict."

"I think that when you are in the machine, something will guide you," Walter said quietly. "I don't entirely understand it myself, but I think there must be some kind of omniscient guide. Nothing else really makes any sense."

Peter rolled his eyes. "Who, Walter?"

"Who knows?" Walter replied. "God maybe?" Walter didn't sound like he was joking.

"Walter, be serious!" Peter chastised.

"Okay, maybe not God," Walter conceded. "But I suspect there has to be some kind of guide, Peter. After all, who knew there were Fedora-wearing men who could move though time? Or experience it differently than we do, anyway. There must be some sentient being that helps you use the machine in whatever way is necessary. This has to be known by others—predicted. If not by the Observers then something or someone else."

Walter nodded at Peter knowingly. "Although multidimensionality suggests infinite outcomes in an infinite number of universes," Walter said, his voice carrying a lilt that suggested he was quoting from something Peter would immediately know, "each universe can produce only one outcome."

"Yeah, Walter," Peter said, his voice dry, "I read it too." And he sounded more like himself than he'd sounded since we came to the lab. "But if that's true, how could the Observers _not_ already know this potential outcome?"

"The Observers anticipated this—anticipated the need to separate the worlds. So they made you—designed you especially to accomplish this task."

"But," I countered, "They said—or Cassandra said—that this has already happened in all possible ways. That there was no escaping it."

Walter nodded, looking pleased with himself. "But the Observer also said that there was something they hadn't predicted as well, my dear."

Walter studied me, letting the tension build, "You, Olivia." He smiled at me and said, "I can only imagine that in every other probable iteration of time the Observers have never seen an outcome in which you two meet—and not only meet, but do so under the exact conditions you did: as children and then again, now as adults, allowing you to form the relationship you did—to develop the connection you have."

Walter smiled at Peter fondly. "The Observers, for all their knowledge and capabilities, can't really understand the human element. They would never be able to predict the impact or the nuances of any human connection, let alone conceive of what the two of you share. The Observer even told you that they never anticipated the connection you two would establish, even as young children. And now that I know the extent of your connection, well, that has to be an unexpected and mitigating circumstance in the possible outcomes."

"So, what you're saying Walter," Peter said, "is that I get into the machine, Olivia pushes back time so I can go back in it, I untangle two different universes, and Olivia is going to somehow get us both back home?"

"Exactly!" Walter said, deliberately missing the clipped edge to Peter's voice that said he thought the idea was preposterous. "I think that both of your abilities will allow you to do this."

Walter stepped towards Peter and put his hand on his shoulder. "I think this is our best chance son."

Peter looked at me questioningly. I could see the disbelief all over his face—it was distressing to look at—but I forced myself to do so and shrugged at him anyway.

"Got any better ideas?" I asked.

Peter took a deep breath and let it out slowly, gazing at the far wall unseeingly.

"It's as good an idea as any. All right, Walter. Let's try it."

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><p>Break. Break. Break.<p>

Break. Break. Break.

Break. Break. Break.

Break. Break. Break.

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><p>Break. Break. Break.<p>

Break. Break. Break.

Break. Break. Break.

Break. Break. Break.

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><p>We didn't say much else after Walter explained his discoveries. Olivia pretended to catch up on paperwork (a surefire way to ensure I'd leave her alone in the office) and I tinkered with a small part of the machine, the function of which was still unknown, and tried not to think about anything at all since all of Walter's seemingly simple explanations were so far beyond the realm of the probable they were less than reassuring.<p>

It wasn't all that hard not to brood about it since I was preoccupied for most of the day with the heavy feeling of my insides being squeezed too tight. It started earlier that day at the stand-off when Olivia shot the drug dealers. Since then, I'd been anxious for reasons entirely apart from my dislike of watching Olivia embracing anything having to do with the injection of The Faux's memories or even Walter's overly-enthusiastic explanations about me separating the worlds.

Something had started burning uncontrollably at the base of my skull right about the time Olivia started assembling the rifle. By the time she had taken out both bad guys with the relaxed casualness of a carny rigging the shooting gallery at the county fair, I'd been way too preoccupied with my anger at Broyles for even calling her to that scene in the first place to really dwell on it.

We went home that night and did our normal routine on auto-pilot. Food, booze, and bed with little comment from either of us. Olivia certainly acted like she was fine—she always did—but with her, the act was never a guarantee. Olivia was as good as I was at ignoring the great, hulking elephant in the room and the giant dung-piles it excreted, if not better. It was one of the various and sundry ways we enabled each other.

Maybe it was fallout from her obviously extra-Olivia shooting skills earlier in the day. Or maybe it was Walter's explanation of what we would have to do once I got into the machine, but by the time we fell into bed the silence between us was heavy and intractable and Olivia was taut as a piano string as she wordlessly scooted as far away from me as the mattress would allow.

In spite of the tension, we both managed to fall asleep somewhat quickly that night, but Olivia's feigned placidity didn't last long.

It never does.

It's never just the visible waves with Olivia. Underneath their surface crash lies the undertow, a slinking rip-current that pulls you out until you're lost at sea.

In the early morning hours I woke up to Olivia nearly climbing on top of me, her body trembling uncontrollably, her hands pressing into my skin insistently.

I'm not a deep sleeper and never have been, so it wasn't the first time Olivia's night-terrors roused me, but usually it's just her twitching and mumbling next to me that wakes me. She rarely reaches full consciousness, let alone reaches out for me, when she has nightmares. And even if she does wake, she never tells me about her dreams. If anything, the nightmares make her more distant and untouchable, often into the next day.

Like a good many things between us though, I just did as best I could in the moment, and then never spoke about it in the daylight. I knew Olivia was ashamed of her near-constant sleep disruptions—that she saw them as a sign of weakness and of her lack of control over her own mind. In anyone else I'd have scoffed at the reasoning, but since Olivia so rarely _had_ the luxury of control over her own mind, I was inclined to let the number of times they woke us both pass by without comment.

But this was different. She was wild-eyed, panting, and shaking. Her body pushing almost frantically against mine, her hands pressing down on my shoulder and chest, her knees squeezing my hips.

"Olivia?" I asked softly, afraid to startle her since I knew from personal experience what she was capable of when surprised. I'd replaced too many things in the house as it was after she lit them on fire. I didn't want to have to replace the whole damned bed if she set it ablaze with us in it.

"Peter?" she said in a near-whisper. She certainly _sounded_ coherent, if scared.

"I'm right here," I said, still refraining from touching her.

"Peter?" she said again, still tentatively. I still wasn't sure if it was the right thing, but I reached up and put my hands on one of hers where it was braced on my chest.

She shuddered a little and closed her eyes when I stroked her arms, leaning into my hands slightly to increase the light pressure I applied. She stayed there perched on top of me for a few minutes looking like she was visibly trying to pull herself together. Then suddenly, she let out a shuddering breath and, like a dam broke somewhere inside her, she started moving on top of me with serious intent. She dropped her mouth to my neck and ground her hips meaningfully into mine.

It took me a few seconds to catch up to her. Considering it was the middle of the night, I couldn't shake the feeling that she was still unsure where or when she was, and I still wasn't entirely convinced she wouldn't set the whole room ablaze after all, but I managed to catch up to her intent relatively quickly. My body is more or less pre-programmed to respond to a certain set of cues from Olivia anyway, and right now those cues were loud and clear, so my cock certainly understood, even if it took my brain a few minutes to catch up.

Olivia kept breathing my name over and over into my skin. It still sounded like a question, but she didn't seem to be asking me since, even when I reassured her over and over by answering, she didn't seem to notice and continued repeating my name.

Just about the second I was hard enough for her to manage it, she slid down onto me, shuddered deeply, and started to move. Her hands didn't stop pressing into me everywhere: my face and neck, my torso and waist, and then my thighs behind her hips.

I reached up to touch her shoulder and then cupped her face in both my hands. She leaned into my hands and I used the advantage to drag her upper body down so it rested on mine. In the grey light of the almost-dawn her eyes were black and filled her whole face, the look in them so intense I closed my eyes for a minute at the combined sensation of her face so close to mine and my cock buried inside her.

"Shit," I gasped as she ground her hips into mine even more urgently. I was getting way too many conflicting signals from her, so that I couldn't grasp what was going on. Olivia's body was doing one thing and her face, now so close to mine, was indicating something altogether different.

Something else was skittering along just outside my conscious thought too—something that itched from the center of my back straight through to the middle of my chest and made the edges of my mind buzz. It was the same feeling I'd carried with me all day, ever since Olivia assembled the rifle, just intensified. I couldn't sort it out though, because my sensory input at that moment was just too much: Olivia's skin against mine, my body buried in her, the resolute sinking of her flesh into my own like she feared I'd disappear right out from underneath her.

Things were unfolding too fast and harsh for me to get a handle on them. My mind and my body were utterly confused so I felt like I was missing something critically important.

"Olivia?" I panted, grabbing her hips in my hands, trying to still her somewhat and cut short at least one cluster of the input vying for my attention. Something had to stop—or at the very least slow down—so I could catch up.

"What the hell are you doing?" I demanded. The effort I was taking to sort out all the sensations washing over us both made me sound angrier and more impatient than I was. I was confused and worried, on top of being incredibly turned on, but I wasn't angry. Unfortunately that's not how it ended up coming out of my mouth.

Olivia froze at my words, only moving her shaking fingers from my shoulders to my face, touching me still like she expected her hands to go right through me.

I could hear her struggling to breathe around some emotion that sounded like it was strangling her chest. She blinked and then looked at me like she was seeing me for the first time.

She made a sound like she was choking, and for a second I worried she might be about to vomit on me. A moment later I fervently wished she had puked since, to my utter and complete horror, Olivia burst into noisy sobs, pressing one hand to the middle of my chest and the other to her mouth like she was trying to stymie the flow of noise from it.

If I didn't know what to do thirty seconds ago, I sure as fuck didn't know what to do now. I felt my cock shrivel inside her like an earthworm dried on the pavement. Because if there's anything in the world that's the opposite of sexy, it's your partner weeping on top of you.

Something new loosened in my chest, causing the buzzing at the edges of my mind to rise to a hum.

Three years Olivia and I have been together in just about every capacity, both personal and professional, and I know intimately every expression ever to cross the landscape of her face. But I think I've seen her cry maybe once—when we drug her out of Walter's Tank. Even then she'd spent more time gasping and shaking than crying. So I couldn't think of one single trick in my still pitifully under-stocked bag of Soothe-Olivia tricks to address this. And even if I did, given the obvious changeability of her emotions right now, I was pretty sure anything I might try would fail in about five seconds if for no other reason than her mood was likely to change.

Shit, I felt more inept than I usually do when it comes to Olivia. I knew I should do _something_ to comfort her, no matter how lame-assed it ended up being, but hell, I was still half-afraid of what she'd do if I made a wrong move. I imagined the whole second floor of our house engulfed in flames while I laid here motionless and pinned under her.

So I stayed there frozen with shock and let her cry for a few seconds before I finally realized that in order to do something, I'd have to move. Praying silently that the tears meant she was too miserable to actually light the room on fire, I half-sat up (as best I could with her on top of me anyway) and gingerly wrapped my arms around her.

When nothing exploded after I touched her, I started rubbing my hands along her back in what I hoped was a soothing gesture.

I don't need Walter to tell me that Olivia likes it when I touch her. Or, at the very least it's not hateful to her, since she allows me to do so with a fair amount of regularity, even on occasions when it's obvious that sex isn't the endgame. In fact, apart from Ella and maybe Rachel, I seem to be the _only_ one allowed to touch her. She shrank away from Walter when he did, and I'd never seen Astrid even try, except for the incidental contact absolutely necessary to conduct experiments in the lab.

At first Olivia didn't show any sign that I'd touched her at all—or even was in the room with her for that matter. A moment later though, she relaxed under my hands and rested her upper body against mine.

"Shhhh," I soothed, pushing a little more firmly on the circles I was making on her back because it seemed like what someone might say and do in this situation.

A heavy despair was dragging along the edges of my consciousness too, and I'll be damned if suddenly I didn't feel like crying myself. Even though Olivia was right here with me and Walter just down the hall, I felt abandoned and alone.

It was so strange. I knew the feeling wasn't mine. I could tell that, even as my stomach started to churn with misery, but I couldn't stop myself from feeling it all the same. It felt very, very real.

Something had upset Olivia badly and I had a feeling that she was unknowingly transferring it to me. By this point I pretty much inferred that whatever it was that made Olivia hold herself together most of the time was tied to the same mechanism inside her that ensured everyone around her wasn't overwhelmed with everything she felt every moment of the day. I always believed she had empathic abilities, though Walter had never explicitly commented on it in his notes. Nick had them and they were partners, so I gathered Olivia had them too.

I also speculated that, unlike the fire, Olivia could control this ability—had probably been doing it instinctively all her life, long before she knew anything about Cortexiphan or her place in Walter's Mad Scientist Schemes. In fact, I strongly suspected that an instinctive fear of losing that control was likely the reason why she so rarely allowed herself to feel much of anything at all, let alone share those feelings with anyone.

I slid one hand up so it cupped her neck and wrapped the other more tightly around her shoulders. Gathering her closer to me I eased us back down onto the bed together so Olivia was stretched out completely on top of me.

I ran one hand along the back of her head, smoothing down her rumpled hair and kept the other hand on her back, rubbing long circles from her shoulders to her lower back.

"Olivia, honey, what's wrong?" I finally asked, distress and confusion and still that nagging buzz and itch making me utter an endearment I'd normally never let myself say out loud.

I was fairly certain she hadn't left the bed. I'd have noticed if she disappeared, I think. I sleep so lightly I'd have noticed if she crossed over. I hoped to Christ she wasn't dreaming someone else's dreams again. Now, _there_ were two uncomfortable days I never wanted to re-live again.

Since she wasn't talking I tentatively tried to reach through our connection so I could figure out what had happened to her, but I didn't really expect it to work. I'd never been able to access her mind the way she could mine, even when I tried. It always felt a bit like beating on a locked door between two rooms I was very familiar with. She was there—I could feel her just out of reach, could even sense some of the more acute feelings—but I couldn't pass the barrier and the wall only grew thicker every time I tried to approach her. Either I wasn't skilled enough or something about Olivia made it impossible for me to uncover a path to her. I'd grown to accept the fact that only Olivia could find the way between us.

But this time, for some reason, it _did_ work.

Just like that, in a sickening rush, I felt our minds link themselves together with an almost audible click.

The feeling was a lot like the sensation of resting your finger on a heated oven-rack in those fleeting seconds before your brain registers the scorch. I belatedly tried to pull away from the burn, but it was too late. She was already there, shoving into and alongside every one of my neurons.

It was appallingly effortless, really. We were just—no longer separate.

The moment had the clichéd effect of the dolly zoom, the feeling of controlled, relentless vertigo. One minute I was me, my identity whole, and the next Olivia was coiled all the way through my mind. She was the finest of white-on-white embroidery, unseen before only because I didn't know how to find and trace her outlines; she was the insistent harmony sweeping under the pressing melody of my own mind, unequivocally there, but I had to concentrate all my energy to perceive her.

I must have choked or made some sort of strangled sound, because the next thing I knew Olivia's face was in mine, both her hands on my cheeks and she was calling my name, though I could only focus on her after long minutes of hearing her voice from far away.

"Peter?" Olivia hissed, her voice now just this side of panic.

I could hear her, but couldn't bring myself to focus on her, intent as I was on seeking out every minute reflection of Olivia's mind sutured into my own.

It was disturbing to say the least, but it was fascinating too. I marveled at the attachment, the fixed network of her inside me. It had always been this way, I could tell, but only now was I able to find it for myself.

Under the best of circumstances, my mind is always a bit scattered. It's not that I can't concentrate on things if I put my mind to it, it's that I can't ever quite concentrate on _only_ one thing. I have to have a least three or four balls in the air at once in order to focus on any of them properly. If I have just one thing to focus on, my mind spirals around that one idea like a pickup truck on a mud field. But add two or more tasks into the mix and everything comes into sharp, individual focus, and I can consider them all at once. I had always been that way, and I have to say that working nonstop these last three years with Walter—whose own thought processes made mine look Martha-Stewart orderly by comparison—has only encouraged those natural tendencies of mine.

Olivia's mind, on the other hand, was like a turbine, its roar fueled by regulated focus and strength. And a furnace-blast of control netted the fear, uncertainty, and loss that hovered in every corner and knothole of her psyche with a strength so tight it was brittle.

"Peter?" She called again.

I always knew Olivia didn't feel at home in the world, and she certainly never felt secure, either with herself or with her capacity to retain any of the minimal pleasures she'd managed to wrest out of this life for herself. She always felt imperiled and I knew the threat never abated. Now, I could see how she'd eradicated every weaknesses, harnessed all her insecurities and gated away each additional identity behind the mental equivalent of steel rebar. She'd accomplished it all with a strength of will I couldn't even begin to comprehend, even though I could feel it for myself now. The result was more effectual than a concrete dam.

I marveled at the sheer force of will necessary for her to put aside such primal instincts. Christ Almighty! I knew Olivia was strong, but this . . .

I may not be exactly the strongest person, but I'm hardly weak-willed. The steamrolling toughness in Olivia's mind, however, made me look like sun-melted Jell-O: unstable, weak and slippery. That potent force and control was dangerous. _She_ was dangerous.

If I had any sense at all I should have felt frightened. Instead, though, what I felt was incredible. _She_ felt incredible: all of her shot throughout my mind, all that strength tumbling inside me and smoothing out the rough, jumbled edges and weak spots in my mind, making me feel stronger, accomplished, capable of anything.

I started at her, wide-eyed and dumbfounded.

She was still calling me, hands gripping my face now, but I didn't want to say anything for fear she would disappear from my vision again. After having access to her, to that strength, I felt like, if I lost it, I'd never be able to function again.

I managed to zoom back in on her for a second. She'd obviously recovered from the nightmare that had woken her. Her eyes were fully present as they searched my face, alert and careful.

She dropped her hands from my face.

"Oh my God," was all she said, and it was enough for me to realize she understood completely what had just happened.

I worked hard to focus on her, though my eyes kept glazing and sliding away to the feel of her inside me.

She looked worried, anxious, maybe even fearful. "You can feel it now, can't you?" she said.

I nodded, still too afraid to speak because the words wouldn't be able to explain, to do the sensation justice.

I started to shake and I could feel her face dip into my neck, her cool hand back on my cheek.

"Are you okay?" she whispered into my skin.

I just nodded again, still shivering against her touch, trembling at the red-hot flare of her coiling through my mind.

"I wondered . . ." she said, trailing off. But lifted her head again and searched my face refusing to take her eyes from mine.

I made a strangled questioning sound and she blinked at me like she was trying to see me from far away. She swallowed. "Today, at the scene, something felt more—" she paused to concentrate, and I could tell that for once she was looking for the right words instead of battling her natural reticence.

"It felt, more—um—intense," she finally settled on. "You were—," she shifted and dropped her eyes to my chest, "you were _buzzing_. And I could hear you more clearly than ever—the actual words, not just the ideas or the feelings."

Horror gripped me for a moment. Olivia had always surreptitiously reassured me that unless she went digging, all she could discern from me were the "feelings and occasionally ideas," as she'd always put it, never anything specific. It had been the one remaining bit of privacy I owned.

"It wasn't just you Peter," Olivia's voice dropped a notch in volume. "I could hear everyone, or so I thought, and I couldn't tell the difference between them. You felt, maybe a little closer, but that was all." She moved her hand from my shoulder back to my face. "Something was different, though, that much I could tell."

I just nodded at her. What else could I do? I was still trying to form the words through my whirring, overtaxed brain, still seeking out every part of her mind embroidered in mine.

"Olivia?" I asked finally, "What the hell did you just dream to make _this_ happen?

She shuffled a little next to me and lowered her head, tucking it into the crease of my shoulder, sliding a little off of me so she was next to me and sharing my pillow, her limbs plaited inside mine.

"You think I did this?" she finally muttered.

My hand slid to her hip when she moved, the other I reached across to cup her shoulder, trying to offer wordless support.

"I don't know who else would have," I said, trying to cover up my amusement by gathering her a little closer.

She stiffened against me and I waited. Waiting for Olivia to be ready to share is easier and saves a lot of hassle and heartache in the long run.

"Mmmm?" I made a non-committal, questioning sound, hoping it would coax more details from her.

But nothing apart from the most extreme specificity works when it comes to wresting the details of Olivia's feelings from her anyway. I don't know why I even attempt subtlety anymore.

"Have you had this dream before?" I asked her.

She nodded against my neck but didn't say anything and I blew out a frustrated breath.

Hey, wait a minute. I didn't need to wait for Olivia to share anymore . . .

I pulled away from our conversation and tried to find her to see if I could figure out what the problem was . . .

It didn't work. The harder I concentrated on her, the further away she got.

What the hell?

Olivia pushed herself away from me to prop herself on an elbow and look at me, amusement now replacing that fear and dull hopelessness in her eyes.

She shook her head at me. "Doesn't work like that," she remarked.

I scowled at her.

Her face grew serious and she dropped her eyes again. "You were gone," she finally said, in a simple answer to my question. "And I couldn't tell if it was a dream, a memory, or a premonition."

It was rude, I knew, but I was still trying to push around through our minds to find a reason why this had happened. It was just too tempting not to. Like a child given a toy he'd been longing for forever, I just couldn't stop playing with the link between us.

Then she smiled at me a little, bending down so our noses were almost touching, making me go cross-eyed trying to look at her, and put a firm hand on my chin, shaking her head in reprimand, "It doesn't work that way when you dig," she said, "Not when you try."

I still wasn't listening to her. I could barely feel every emotion cascade from her mind to mine. I couldn't stop trying to trace back every dip and sway of her outlines until they led me back to her, couldn't keep striving to capture the lustrous bits of her I could sense for myself.

"Peter!" she said, her voice hissing my name in a way that was almost school-mistressish.

I blinked at her, focusing on her for the first time.

She smiled at me, knowing and tolerant. "You have to _not_ focus on it," she ordered me, and I did my best to listen to her, but my newfound abilities were so seductive: she was just out of reach and I couldn't help but pursue her.

She shook her head at me like you would a unruly child and then dropped her ear to my chest.

She twined the hand trapped between our bodies into mine. Her voice lowered. "You have to let it fall away. If you chase it, you won't ever reach it. You have to let it find you."

I didn't say anything because I didn't want to contradict her outright. But it felt like she was _right_ _there_. I could get her if I just pulled a little harder.

Olivia chuckled against me and I felt her shake her head. "You don't know everything there is to know, Peter Bishop," she said, sounding more indulgent that I'd have ever imagined she could be at the prospect of me digging around in her mind.

"I know," she went on, "You're used to being the smartest person in the room. And usually, you are, but not this time. You're going to have to listen if you want to do this for real. But if you just want to stay frustrated, that's fine too."

Now her tone was the one she used on uncooperative suspects and their accomplices, right before they blew their last chance to get in her good graces.

She reached down and pulled the covers back up to her, gave me a condescending pat on the head and rolled over, presenting me with her back. "Let me know when you're ready to listen and I'll do what I can to help you understand how this works. Until then, I'm going back to sleep."

I waited a few minutes, just on principle, to prove that I wasn't entirely at the mercy of her superior knowledge. I hated to admit it, but she was right. No matter how hard I tried to grasp the outer edges of her mind, when I concentrated on trying to reach her, she just slipped away, thin and clear as water through my fingers.

I waited just a bit longer after that, before I rolled over and slid an arm around her waist, moving toward her at the same time I dragged her my direction so she was pressed along my front.

I buried my nose in the tumble of hair along her neck and breathed in her Olivia-smell, layered overtop the smell of our bed and of us together.

"You think I can get this new toy all of a sudden and then _not_ try to play with it?" I said into her ear. "That's like asking a twelve year-old not to play with his cock. It's _never_ going to happen, no matter how much you scold me."

I lowered my voice to a deliberately lewd growl, "But I _do_ have some other ideas of when you can use that teacher-tone on me."

I was rewarded with a little, amused snort and the comforting feel of her scooting against me so her back fit more comfortably against me.

"Of course I want your help," I told her.

Olivia didn't say anything for long minutes. Finally she spoke, so quietly I had to lean my face closer to her to hear her say, "Try to clear you mind. Don't try and pull it towards you. If you pull at it, it just slips farther away."

Easier said than done, I thought blackly.

"Try and focus on one thing," she pressed. "I don't think it matters what you focus on."

"What do you focus on?" I asked.

Such a long time passed that I didn't think she would ever answer me, and then she finally said, her voice husky, "Lots of things. Sometimes, though, when it's harder or I'm distracted, a white tulip works when other things don't."

I nodded and tried to focus, but I didn't have anything specific in my head and it wouldn't come.

Olivia moved against me and my hand dropped from the curve of her hip to spread against her belly, the smooth fabric of her tank stretched across the taut skin beneath it.

For just a second I could feel her filling the outside edges of my mind, but the instant I felt I it, I couldn't help myself, I reached for her and, predictably, she snapped back even more out of reach than before.

"You can't be so grabby," Olivia chided me, but her voice was kind. "You have to let it come to you. If you wrestle it, it will never come."

I made a disgruntled noise against her neck, since I was trying to figure out how Miss Control Freak 2011-12 ever, _ever_ was able to do this.

I could feel her smile in the movement of her skin against mine. "I went at it a little at a time. But, because I was trying _not_ to think about it, trying to ignore it, it came to me a bit more forcefully. That's how I figured it out."

"And then I got trapped on the Other Side," she went on. "It was a powerful motivator. Then, I _wanted_ to find you. I didn't even understand what that meant, but I felt like I could use our connection to get home."

She gave a wry, little laugh. "They could bury me, it turns out, try to erase me with the other me, but they couldn't bury you _in_ me. Not for long anyway. Which doesn't say a lot about my strength of character, but oh well."

I never considered what happened to our connection when Olivia was trapped on the Other Side. I guess I underestimated its importance in Olivia's consciousness. Walter had told me she'd said I "appeared" to her when she was on the Other Side, but I never really gave much thought to what that meant before now. Now that I could feel the full weight of her for myself I could see how she might have been able to use our link to find her way home.

Given all of this, it really was a goddamned miracle Olivia hadn't re-claimed Walter's padded cell at St. Claire's for herself. It's easy to forget when you're around Olivia how very hard it must be for her, mostly because she makes it look so easy. I'm around her all the time and I have a vested interest in her well-being, but even _I_forget what it must be like to always constantly wonder which part of you is you.

"When I was on the Other Side was when it really hit me," she said. "When I was trying to be someone else was when you were the strongest. Before I went to the Other Side, in those first few months I could feel you, I spent a lot of time trying to keep you out because it felt wrong to dig in someone else's mind. After I got home, though, is when I really realized that it works best when you _don't_ try and think about it."

I was listening to the throaty timber of her voice and the way it swerved and cradled every word, concentrating on the rare treat of just holding her body against mine: the tickle of her hair against my chin and cheek, the lush drag of her skin along mine and the restless glide of her legs across my calves, the steady rise-and-fall of her ribs against my chest.

And because I was thinking about her, about the straightforward pleasure of her body against mine suddenly, there her mind was, blooming wildly in and around me, cool and fluid and formless, spreading everywhere like smoke in a dark room, veering into and flowing through channels of my mind I didn't even know existed.

Olivia was suddenly still against me and I could tell—I just _knew—_she could feel me now and could feel what I was doing. I tried not to think about it, tried not hold on to her.

I focused on her breathing, honed in on the way we breathed almost-together, yet not quite in-time, and tried to match my breath to hers.

Olivia was right. If I just let it be and didn't think too hard about her or about trying to hold onto her mind too tightly she was just there. It was like trying not to focus on something in your peripheral vision. Focus on the edges and they disappeared. Focus on the middle, and the edges spread and spiraled around you.

Olivia squeezed my fingers where they were splayed across her belly.

"Peter?"

"Hmm?"

"I know you can do it," she said with that tolerant note in her voice again. "I've never doubted it for a second."

I almost lost her again in the rush of shock I felt at her words. At how easily she'd picked that fear about failing when I was in the machine right out of my mind.

"And how are you so sure?" I asked her, hurling both taunt and self-deprecation at her. I struggled to hold onto her, even as I felt her mind start to slip away.

I no longer bothered to hide my fear, since it was a wasted effort. She needed to know this anyway, though I had no way of bringing it up in regular conversation. Even if I could do all the things Walter seemed to think I could, and even if some unseen hand was going to be there to guide me, if the fate of the universes really did boil down to my evaluation of greater or lesser value, they both needed to know that they probably shouldn't count on me.

If the whole deck of our plan was stacked with me and some unknown magic trick I was supposed to perform with my Machine-controlled mind, we really were well and truly fucked.

I was too invested, too selfish. Olivia needed to know that, no matter what the circumstances, I was near-certain that I'd always choose her and Walter. That, while I might be able to sacrifice myself for the rest of the world, I'd never be able to give them up for it.

I was weak. I always have been, and had never pretended otherwise. It was Olivia who made me selfless, who made me want to be better than I actually was, which I guess, when everything else was stripped away, was why I loved her. If she wasn't right there, reminding me of what I needed to do and who I needed to be, I knew I'd never have the strength.

She pulled my hand from her belly with her fingers linked around my wrist and brought it up and tucked it under her cheek, turning her face so her lips grazed my palm. "Because you are more full of love than anyone I know. Have _ever_ known."

She linked her fingers in mine and pressed her cheek to our twined hands. "And you don't see it. But I do. And so does Walter, or he wouldn't ask you to do this."

She paused for a minute, shifting against me. "You think I don't know what that was about on Friday, when we headed right to when you argued with your mother, but I do. You can't stand the thought of letting even one person down—there is no way you could let the whole world down." She shook her head against my face, "Not ever."

I froze with embarrassment. "Who are you and what have you done to Olivia?" I muttered only half-joking.

The minute it was out of my mouth I worried that I'd upset her, since those words have special potential for harm for us.

But she just stroked my wrist with her lips again, resting her forehead against my fingers for a minute before she guided my hand back to her stomach and pressed it into her.

"Go ahead," she said, opening her palm against the top of my hand. "You can make sure it's me and confirm that I believe everything that I'm saying."

But even though I could do it now, I didn't need to. I could already feel her faith in me and the feeling was staggering, her blazing approval near-painful. I don't know if Olivia loves me or what it might feel like if she did, but I honestly didn't think my mind could carry anything weightier than the lavish recognition currently soaking into mine from hers. Anything else would be too intense to bear, too sharp to hold. Whatever this was she was giving me now—it was enough to live on.

More than enough.


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary**: Olivia comes back. Olivia and Peter save the world. Again.

**Pairings**: Peter/Olivia

**Rating**: M. You have been warned.

**Disclaimer**: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended

**Completed**: . . . almost there . . .

**Spoilers**: AU after early season 3 (more or less around _Do Shapeshifters Dream of Electric Sheep?). _Includes some elements of the early part of Season 3, but no spoilers beyond that.

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><p><strong>AN**: I'm still here! Sorry about the very, very long delay, in posting but unfortunately Real Life has been commanding all of my attention recently. This story is complete (and has been for a while) and the final chapter has been sent off to beta. It will be posted just as soon as possible. I'll be out of town for the next week, but all comments will be petted and cherished (as always) when I return.

In return for your very considerable patience, I have posted the two penultimate chapters, Chapters 19 and 20. Happy reading (if anyone still is reading, that is . . .)

Thank you to my beta, starg8fans.

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><p><strong>Chapter 19<strong>

"I know you don't want to talk about what happens after I get into the machine," Peter said after he walked into the lab's office and closed the door behind him, "but I need you to do something for me."

I looked up at him from the article on time travel Walter had given me to read at my desk. This couldn't be good. Peter had that passive-alert look on his face that usually meant he was spoiling for a fight.

I scooped up Cat, who was curled in my lap, and slid her to the ground. Walter had been bringing her to the lab with him every day, arguing that since we were pulling sixteen and seventeen-hour days on average that she needed the companionship.

I had a sneaking suspicion it was Walter who needed the companionship, but I demurred saying so.

"What is it?" I asked carefully.

Peter studied Cat as she flicked an affronted tail and headed over to the couch to find a better spot for sleeping, before he slid an official-looking piece of paper across the desk to me. I glanced at it and back at him, waiting for him to explain.

His eyes slid from the paper to the high basement windows. "It's a will," he explained, not looking at me. He shoved his hands in his pockets. "Well, part of it, anyway. I—I want to make sure . . ." he trailed off, and tilted his chin to study the weak sun coming in from the windows.

A few moments passed, then he shrugged and swiveled back to face me. "I want to make sure the children—the ones Elizabeth created—are cared for, in case something happens to their parents and I'm not here to see to it. And I want it done anonymously."

Peter had never mentioned what he planned to do about his relationship to those children and I'd never asked. I guess I figured he'd tell me if and when he wanted me to know. Maybe I would have been less reluctant to bring it up if I'd had a clue as to what I thought he _should_ do about it. It felt wrong somehow to show up and announce he was their father, since he wasn't, not really. Not in any way other than the biological, and Peter was in a position to understand that better than anyone. And yet it seemed equally strange to do nothing, especially given that Peter had no other family apart from Walter.

I stood up and came around the desk so we were side by side. "What do you need me to do?" I asked quietly, looking down to skim the document. The last thing I wanted to do was make this harder for him.

I'm no lawyer, but from what I could skim through the legalese Peter had set up a trust for each of the living children: Eli, James, and Miriam, to be released to them when they were 25.

"You're primary," he said, pointing to a spot on the document where I could see my name. "And Astrid is secondary."

Good. I nodded. I really didn't want to have to remind him that I may not be around to oversee this because it was at least equally probable that I wouldn't make it out of this alive either.

Peter turned around next to me and rested his hip on the edge of the desk. I bent over to read the document and he stood quietly while I did so. A generous trust was available to all three children when they came of age. If something happened to their parents before that, the trust could be released then, pending trustee approval. And, in the event the trustee found it warranted, she was allowed to withdraw the trust.

"Under what circumstances do you want that to happen?" I asked him, pointing at that provision.

"The usual," Peter supplied. "I don't want the money to go to drugs, or gambling," he chuckled darkly, "or a grift. I won't be here, so you and Astrid will just have to use your judgment."

Something about the way Peter was talking made me suddenly understand. This was about the trust for the children—he clearly wanted that set up—but the way he'd gone about it, the way he was talking about it, it was obvious that this was also a statement of faith that I would make it, even if he didn't.

"Okay," I said. "Where do I sign?"

Peter pointed wordlessly to a spot on the back and I signed. "Initial here," he pointed, "and here."

I did so, and pushed it back on the desk to him. "Anything else I need to know?"

Peter shook his head but he didn't pick up the paper or leave. He just stood there, half-turned away from me, staring out the window again, shoulder hunched a little against something he didn't seem to want to face.

"I just wanted to make sure they'll be okay," he finally said, and I don't think I've ever seen him look so uncomfortable, even those first few days after I came back from the Other Side. He glanced at me momentarily, "You know?"

I nodded. What could I say? It's not like there are rules of etiquette to be followed for when your partner asks you to sign on as trustee for his lab-manufactured offspring.

"Are you going to, uh—," I shifted my weight from one side to the other on feet that suddenly felt too big and heavy to move, "go see them?" I asked.

He shook his head before the words were even out of my mouth all the way. "Uh-uh," he said. "They've got families already. They don't need me."

It was difficult to get a read on Peter's emotions so I really wasn't sure what, if anything, I should do or say.

I moved a couple of steps and came so I was standing in front of him where he was still pressed against my desk. I shrugged and leaned toward him. "Are you all right?" I asked.

Peter rolled his eyes a little so they came to rest on me. "I'm fine," he said, too quickly.

I reached out to touch his arm where it met his hand shoved stiffly in his pocket. "Tell me what to say," I begged. "I don't know what to say."

I was feeling a little more brave since for whatever reason, Peter still hadn't left, so I let my fingers trail up his arm to his shoulder and, after I stepped even closer, drift across his jaw-line and along his cheekbone until my hand was cradling the left side of his face.

He smiled at me darkly, and turned to brush his lips across my palm. Then he pulled away, turning his face from my hand like he was ashamed, and moved across the room to put a little distance between us.

He took a breath, "There's nothing to say. They're not mine. Doesn't matter what biology says."

"Did you want them to be yours?" I asked, puzzled. In all the time I'd known Peter he'd never mentioned having children, or anything even remotely approaching the subject. I guess I assumed he realized, like I did, that nothing approaching normal would ever belong to him anyway. And I'd always assumed he never mentioned it because he didn't want those things, but now I was beginning to wonder if he hadn't mentioned them because of me.

He sighed, looking weary and drawn. I had to resist the urge to close the distance between us and touch him again because I was convinced it would help, somehow. "No." He shook his head, shrugged. "Maybe," he countered. Then he reached down to rub a knuckle behind one of Cat's gnarled, crooked ears. "I don't know." He blew out an uncomfortable breath.

Cat turned her golden eyes on Peter with what might have been sympathy, and lifted her chin into his finger. She thought about it for a minute and then gave a low, belated growl, like she wanted to keep their boundaries established.

Peter moved away. Long moments passed wordlessly. "I wanted a trust," he finally said tiredly. "Now there's a trust.

I shuffled a little in front of him, feeling awkward and uncertain, and then jammed my hands into my own trouser pockets to prevent myself from crossing the room and touching him again.

He glanced at me and I nodded.

Then, he moved away from me again to fetch the paper from the desktop. He tri-folded it very carefully, very precisely and slid it into his opposite hand. With a final furtive glance at me, he walked out of the office.

Through the open door of the lab I watched him pull on his coat, explain to Walter he'd be back sometime in the afternoon, and leave with the paper still clenched in his palm.

I sighed and dropped back onto the couch, rubbing Cat absently when she nudged my hand with the top of her head.

Lucky for me, I mused, there was still plenty of work left that day. Walter insisted on time to work with Peter and me individually as well as together, so he and I spent the rest of the day making various laboratory equipment sail across the room on Walter's command.

For some reason, Walter was stuck on his perceived idea of my psychokinetic abilities. He seemed to think that the whole issue of the end of the world could be wrapped up successfully by having me hover pencils in the air in front of us both or open books from across the room.

Of course, there was always the chance that Walter was doing all this for his own amusement. _Because I can_ and _Because I should_ have always been a little muddled in Walter's world-view and I had no reason to think that current circumstances were any different.

By the time Peter got back it was early evening. Without realizing it I'd worked most of the afternoon away. I lost track of time because after Walter finished with me, I worked to catch up on my part of the report about the day I shot the drug dealers. The document was a collaborative fiction between Broyles and myself, endowed with more hokum and rhetorical dodging than an Amway convention, tightly spun so the events of that day wouldn't make either of us look too bad or too crazy to The Powers that Be.

By the time I could feel Peter approaching the building like a wall of energy pushing against mine—the blossoming of his own abilities had made it much harder for me to keep him separate, though I hadn't told him that yet—I was starving, not to mention mean, from not eating lunch.

Peter slung a paper bag with a sandwich in it onto my desk, grinning a little when I glared at his knowing look.

"I didn't even have to use our shared superpowers to know you'd skip lunch," he said, ignoring my low growl as I dug into the bag and found a Ruth Wilensky only a little squashed, "and you'll be too mean to live tonight by the time Professor Xavier out there is ready for us to play his twisted version of the X-Games."

"You went all the way to Brooklyn?" I asked around a mouthful of salami and onion roll.

Peter rolled his eyes at me. "No. I've only been gone for four hours. Even I can't defy the laws of physics."

He stopped for a minute in the middle of the room. Considered his statement. "Not, at least without Walter around to help," he amended.

"I went to Massive Dynamic," he added unnecessarily a minute later watching me dig into my sandwich, "where I sent one of my many, many minions to Brooklyn for your long-overdue lunch, just to see you smile."

"I'm not smiling," I pointed out as I shoveled another too-big bite into my mouth.

Peter sat down next to me and put his feet up on the desk, his giant shoes close enough to my food to earn him a dirty look.

"Oh, I can wait," he said breezily, not moving his feet at all. "I'm used to practicing patience when it comes to getting what I want out of you," he remarked, patently ignoring the transformation of my dirty look into an all-out glare, which was wiped away with my next bite.

"Sorry, the poutine couldn't make the trip," he apologized, "Even the speed of Massive Dynamic's helicopter couldn't have kept that edible."

He really did know me far too well. I had just noticed the lack of my favorite menu item from Mile End. I shrugged and took another bite. "S'okay," I mumbled around a pile of smoked meat. "This'll do."

He watched me eat for a few minutes, brushing away my silent offer of half of my sandwich. "I already ate since lunch was _hours_ ago."

Peter could nag with the committed zeal of a stage mother. He behaved as if me not eating three full meals a day was a moral failing.

He and Walter, on the other hand, ate all the time. I've never seen two people consume so much food. It was a miracle they didn't get fat. Or keel over from a heart attack. I have no idea why Walter didn't weigh five hundred pounds, given the number of empty calories he consumed in an average week. He must have a crazy-pumped metabolism, which Peter had obviously inherited. Peter at least exercised with a fair amount of regularity. More often than not he accompanied me on my morning runs. I might eat for shit, but I compensate for it by not doing it very often. And, since being fit is often the difference between health and extreme injury in my job, I made a point to do it almost every day.

I polished off the half of my sandwich I could eat and Peter stood and hiked his head in the direction of the main room of the lab.

"I'll go help Walter get everything together," he said "so we can get started."

Ever since Walter declared that my job was to hold back either a) time or b) space (he was cagey about the details even by Walter standards when Peter pressed him), he'd become obsessed with my brain waves and had amused himself by affixing different monitoring equipment to my skull and trying to forcibly relax me.

He'd always claimed my brainwaves were different—he discovered that back in the fall when I'd went wherever it is I went to rescue the children—but he fixated on them now, specifically on the lower-frequency theta brain waves active in that period between sleep and wakefulness, when drowsy, daydreaming, or aroused and how they interacted with Peter's when we worked together.

In spite of Walter's newest theories, most of what we were doing in the lab seemed to be a failure. Walter could see the differences in my brain waves on the monitoring equipment, but he couldn't explain why they were that way. Then there was the problem of the fire. I might have special brain waves and they may even be especially attuned to Peter's for some unspecified reason, but none of that matters even a little since I still couldn't completely keep from setting things on fire whenever I tried to work on perfecting the process, either alone or with Peter.

I didn't need to be told by the resident geniuses that all our work would be for naught if I lit the world(s) on fire trying to save it.

Mercifully, Peter and I hadn't had to be drugged in a while much beyond a few anti-anxiety meds to relax us when we were in the lab, but we had reached a stalemate where little observable progress was being made and my own frustration was growing exponentially.

I wrapped up the remains of my sandwich and put it in the refrigerator for later. Then, I slid out of my shoes and all my clothes but my underwear and tank, and headed into the lab where Peter and Walter were waiting for me.

By the time I made it out to the main area of the lab, Peter and Walter were already arguing, their voices growing louder by the second.

Peter was shaking his head. "No way, Walter. I know how you love to piss all over whatever line I draw, but not this time."

"Peter," Walter whined. "Investigating arousal is a viable method of inquiry. We can set things up so that there is some privacy—"

"Walter—," Peter warned, and he would have went on, but I interrupted.

"Can you guys figure this out?" I asked, gesturing to my all-too-common state of undress. "I'm a little chilly here, and I don't want to freeze to death before you two make up your minds."

They both ignored me and Walter's eyes slid right back to Peter's. Peter, on the other hand, had stopped talking immediately when I came in.

Usually when I walked around half-naked in the lab, at least since we'd been sleeping together openly, I got veiled, lascivious looks from Peter or, at the very least, a low-toned, lewd comment intended for my ears only. This time though, it was as if the public display of my skin (which he'd had occasion to see more than his fair share of for a variety of professional and personal reasons) made his tongue immobile.

He just blinked at me, working hard to wipe all expression from his face. And even in the low-light I could see a dull flush creeping up his cheekbones.

Eyes still fixed to my body, Peter reached to yank off his sweater, which he achieved with a few jerky movements, and tossed it my way.

"Here," he said, and his eyes finally slid away, "It might be awhile because," and he turned back to address Walter, his own voice rising to almost a shout by the end of the sentence, "there is NO WAY I'm letting you do THAT to Olivia. Or to me!"

Walter took a deep breath and pulled himself up to his full height, which he rarely allowed his customarily bent back to do.

"Peter," he said, his tone deeply insulted. "This is a perfectly legitimate request. The area of Olivia's brain that is being stimulated when she is able to move between universes and link her mind with your own is the center for—"

"I said 'NO', Walter," Peter interrupted. He headed my way, and steered me toward the back room with a hand on the small of my back. "Just no," he called over his shoulder as we headed into the office.

At the door of the office he added, "For that matter, no more experiments tonight, Walter. We're going home."

"What was that about?" I asked, once we were back in the office and Peter handed me my clothes so I could start to dress.

In the better light of the office, I could see the color deepen under his cheekbones. He refused to meet my eye.

"Walter wants to—" he stopped to pull his sweater back on when I handed it to him.

When he didn't say anything else, I asked, "What does Walter want to do this time?"

Peter studied the floor. "You know how Walter's been obsessed with our brain waves?"

I nodded.

"It's the theta waves," he said. "Well, yours are different. The oscillations are the same, but the amplitude is all over the map and he thinks that's at the heart of what allows you to do the things you can do."

I raised my eyebrows at him. "So? What's the problem?"

Peter sighed. "You know how they are active during drowsiness and daydreaming? He wants to see if he can alter the pattern. If anything can alter the pattern." He ran his hand through the back of his hair and looked at the floor. "And since he's already seen the brain waves when you're drowsy and when you're between sleeping and waking, well, he wants to observe them for the third circumstance. . ."

It suddenly dawned on me what Walter had wanted to do to me.

I burst out laughing.

Peter just stared at me in stunned silence.

"Well, it wouldn't be the first time," I pointed out, still laughing. "What exactly did he want to do?" I asked.

Peter still stared at me in shock and then finally dropped his eyes to his feet. "I don't even want to say it," he confessed. "Let's just say it was something that should be private and leave it at that."

I snickered. It was so unlike Peter to get even mildly ruffled about anything, I couldn't help but enjoy his discomfort, even though most of the joke probably hinged on my having a very public orgasm, or at the very least, coming uncomfortably close.

What can I say? I've been working with Walter for almost four years now and, sadly, I've grown completely immune to Walter's wilder fancies and his utterly serious approach to his preposterous experiments.

Peter threw his hands in the air in defeat. "I give up," he flustered. "The two of you are just, you're just—"

I did a bad job of hiding my amusement at his embarrassment.

"Oh, just forget it, will you?" Peter begged. "Let's get out of here. I'm not getting any more work done today anyway."

He shifted a little awkwardly, adjusting his jeans around his hips.

I couldn't help myself. My eyes followed the movement to drop between his legs.

Without thinking I licked my lips to wet them, and when I raised my eyes to his the lights in the back of Peter's eyes flared and turned to molten gold.

He swallowed, watching me for a minute longer, and then turned his back on me and headed for the door.

When he got there he paused for a minute with his hands on the knob. "Home." He husked. "Now."

I didn't have to be told twice. I was already shoving my arms into my coat.

As soon as we got home, Peter bade Walter's back goodnight as he shuffled off to the kitchen to make himself a snack. Not surprisingly, the minute I'd shed my coat, Peter was tugging me toward the stairs.

I expected him to pull me to him for a kiss the minute the door was closed, but he didn't, so I stepped further into the room and reached to pull off my shoes, kicking them into a corner by the closet.

But when I started to work on my suit jacket a second later he was right behind me, his hands covering mine to still them on the buttons of my blazer.

He pulled me back against him and pinned me to him, hunching his shoulders around me, pressing his elbows against my ribs and unfastening the buttons of my jacket. He freed my hands only when it was necessary to slide them out of the sleeves and then trapped them again with his fingers linked around my wrists pinned just below the waistband of my trousers.

Like I was going anywhere.

His other hand went exploring, brushing lightly along my hips, waist and ribs, then on to my collarbone, and finally my neck, where he traced uncharted runes against my skin before his fingertip veered south again, across the V of skin exposed by my shirt and down to my breasts.

He gave a little satisfied chuckle when his fingers brushed across and then away from my nipples, taut and straining against my bra and shirt.

I let out a huff of frustration when he refused to give my breasts the attention they were so obviously screaming for. His caresses moved on, cupping my ribs in his palms before sweeping down lower to my waist and finally, my hips, where he pulled me back against him hard and possessive.

One arm held me still and the other moved to work on the buttons of my shirt. It took all my willpower not to squirm in his hold. He was deliberately drawing this out I could tell. He had scarcely touched me and my breathing was already ragged, my heart pounding behind my breastbone.

There wasn't a lot of sexual teasing between us. We either had sex or we didn't. Since the first time I dragged him into the custodial closet and practically assaulted him, Peter had never turned down any advance of mine and God knows I didn't play hard to get—not even by the loosest of definitions. I couldn't have, even if I'd wanted to since Peter could, and with alarming frequency _did_, have me gasping with lust with one glittering, half-lidded look across one of Walter's bloody autopsies.

Even when things were utterly shitty between us in every other way, the sex was always fantastic. Of course, even bad sex is usually good, but with Peter it was always a good deal better than good, even when (especially when) everything else was crumbling around us.

I also could never be certain what Peter's mood would be in bed for any given encounter, and this one was no exception. There never seemed to be any correlation between Peter's current mood and his sex mood. I've seen him so spitting angry with me he could barely see straight, leaving me to anticipate the fast and angry sex that was our default setting for a very long time, and then be utterly dumbfounded when instead he'd spend hours lying passively underneath me, telling me all night long how beautiful I was, how unbelievable it was to be together. And I've seen his eyes filled to overflowing with tenderness one minute only to find myself bent over the footboard of the bed the next, the only sound our harsh and ragged breaths cutting the silence of the room as he drove into me from behind.

Peter stepped back from me just enough that he could peel my shirt from my body and I let him since I wasn't sure I had the will to do much of anything other than to submit to this slow seduction. A second later, he unfastened the waist of my trousers and slid down the zipper painfully slowly.

I considered that I should move, should do something, but I was too mesmerized by his hands to act. He hadn't even touched me, not really, and I was half-mad with want, gutted by the hunger for the feel of his skin against mine.

I did my best to hide it, but I started trembling.

I doubt I did a very good job.

Generally speaking, I'm more of a get-to-the-good-stuff kind of partner in bed. It's not that I didn't like foreplay—it's a very fine thing—but in the right mood Peter could promote anticipation into an art form, and frankly, I usually didn't have the patience or the resignation to play along. It was a special kind of dominance; subtle, like Peter himself, and it wasn't very often that I let him.

Finally, finally his palm was on my belly, tracing maddening circles slowly upwards to my breasts where his fingers traced just their outer edges for the longest time before he tilted his head to breathe on my neck.

A moment later, his mouth was on the spot he'd been breathing on, and his hand finally fully cupped my breast, now heavy inside my bra and aching almost painfully.

His other hand was still on my hip, pulling me even closer to him while his mouth worked on my neck, breathing hard behind my ear, nipping that the sensitive skin at the juncture of my shoulder with his teeth, causing something between pleasure and sting. His free hand left my hip to pull his shirt over his head, unfasten his belt, and step out of his jeans.

He released one of his hands enough to move it down and push at the baggy waistband of my trousers, sliding them and my underwear down my hips, giving me just enough leeway to wiggle out of them. I started to turn around to touch him because I badly wanted to, but the minute I moved, he stepped back in to me, pulling me almost roughly back against him into the paralyzing sensation of his warm skin against my back, the commanding restraint of his arms across my chest, pinning me to him.

A second later both of his hands were on my breasts, and his mouth more emphatic on my neck, his rough tongue worrying my hyper-sensitive skin to the point I thought I'd scream, his nose nudging my bra straps aside so they hung loose around my upper arms.

He stepped forward toward the bed, the ridiculously soft skin of his erection hard against my tailbone. Peter held me still at the edge of the bed, reaching up with a hand to loosen my hair from its elastic band and then smoothing it gently against my neck. With one hand twitching against my right nipple, he ran the fingers of his other hand under my loosened hair and against my scalp, rubbing hard to wipe away the ache of having my hair restrained for the day.

There was a moan, high and haggard at the same time, and I realized it was coming from me.

The next thing I knew I was lowered on my side on the bed, the sheets rustling as he moved behind me. Then his warm breath was back on my neck as his right arm gliding between my head and the pillow and the left draped across my waist.

I shifted back against him a little, digging my shoulders further into the mattress and against his chest. He curled his left shoulder down against mine, clamping me to him, subduing me from neck to tailbone with the heat of his body.

His fingers spread open on my belly and pushed so my hips tipped back into his erection and finally I was treated to the sound his low groan right in my ear while he used his chin to sweep my hair off my neck to make way for his mouth.

His fingers trailed down between my legs. My restless squirming caused his finger to slip and skate across my clit and slide lower where I was so aching and hot. I gasped when it slicked across my entrance.

"Jesus, Olivia," he swore when he felt how wet I was, and it was the first indication I'd had that he was even half as turned on by this as I was. He sounded startled and dazed.

I was more than a little dazed myself. I moved erratically against him, against his finger tracing me outside and then inside with maddening slowness. I raised my left leg so my foot was flat on the bed to give him better access, dropping my head back against his shoulder in complete surrender.

Christ, I was close. _So_ close: chest heaving, pleasure curling bright in my belly, muscles so taut I worried I'd injure something. I reached behind me between us to grasp his cock, giving it a few experimental strokes while Peter gasped in my ear.

A second later though, he trapped my hands and pulled them in front of me, pressing them into my belly with a hand on top of mine.

"Peter, please," I breathed, "oh please. . ."

His mouth latched onto my neck, sucking hard so I could feel the edges of sharp teeth, his free hand pinching a nipple.

_He's going to kill me_, I thought distractedly, my entire body focused on the head of his cock, fumbling blindly through the space between us, trying to find the right angle.

"Fuck, I love it when you beg me like that," he muttered, trying to still my thrashing body against his. Then, finally, his cock pushed inside me just a little and I almost cried out at the clawing hunger.

"God Almighty," he breathed rawly as and he slid the rest of the way inside me, damp forehead flopping against my ear.

I was shaking wildly now, so much that Peter would have never been able to stay inside me had he not been clutching me unyieldingly against him as his hips started undulating against mine.

This was one of my favorite positions and Peter knows it. There's not a lot of visual stimulation unfortunately, but something about being pulled back flush against Peter's body when he's fitted inside me, his hand splayed on my belly, his face tucked into my neck and his arm wrapped around my shoulders, growling alternating obscenities and endearments in my ear somehow manages to be both oddly reassuring and insanely erotic to me.

It's _always_ intense between us, and I've gotten used to it, more or less. But I always feel a little more open, a little more comfortable with that intensity when Peter is behind me, his body curled against mine, holding me to him, anchoring me to the present so there's nothing else but the feel of him against me, inside me, nothing more to learn but the sound of our harsh breathing. Somehow, having him behind me cuts the rawness, the debilitating fierceness of our coupling.

I didn't have a lot of control anymore, and I shoved my hips against him decisively, my mind utterly useless now, completely overcome by my body, now on its own mission.

"More," I ordered, vocabulary barely rudimentary, fingers reaching behind me, nails digging into his ass. "Harder."

Peter complied, leaning up and against me so I was almost, but not quite, face-down on the bed. I lifted my left leg a bit more, pitching my knee up towards my face, bracing us both with my hand outstretched on the mattress in front of us. My movements changed the angle to a shallower one that increased the friction and it wasn't long before Peter's arms tightened around my shoulders, his forearm against my neck, and he pressed his full body weight onto me, his own movements matching the raw urgency I felt.

His fingers stumbled on my hips erratically. I guided them back to my clit and a few more strokes had me tumbling over the edge, my hands fumbling behind me for his hips to draw him harder and deeper into me, my teeth sinking into his forearm as I came to keep myself from screaming. Peter pulled me closer, his arms so tight around me I thought I'd melt into him, his cheek sweaty and glued against mine while he savored the prolonged, clenching waves of my orgasm for as long as he could before they pushed him over the edge himself.

Later, when out panting breaths had slowed to normal respirations, I snuggled against Peter and he shifted to roll away from me a little, back onto his side, curling his body around mine. He reached out to pull away a hunk of hair that had fallen across my face.

I was too tired to concentrate, too tranquil to keep him out, so I rode along the sharp waves of pleasure as they receded in his mind, replaced by smooth tranquility I couldn't help but latch on to.

We laid there for a while quietly, and maybe we even dozed off.

A long time later he said softly into the dark, "Today is my mom's birthday."

I didn't move or speak because I didn't have a clue what to say or where he was going with this.

A few minutes passed and then Peter added "I miss her." I was surprised how clear and steady his tone was. I would have expected him to be more tentative. I wanted to roll over so I could see his face, but I also really didn't want to move from his embrace. He dug his chin a little harder into my neck and I felt him smile a little.

"She was funny," he said. "She told the best stories."

I dropped my hand to tuck it around his wrist under my body and waited until the silence settled thick around us before I asked quietly, "What did you say to her?"

Peter flinched against me, muscles tightening. Then, I could feel him forcibly relaxing his body where it practically enveloped mine, one muscle at a time, his skin whispering against the sheets a little as he did so. "I thought you heard," he finally admitted.

I nodded no. "I know it wasn't nice though," I added.

He turned his face a little into my neck and inhaled, swallowing audibly. "I told her she wasn't my mother."

I didn't say anything. Just waited and listened.

"I didn't mean that I remembered something," he qualified quickly. "I didn't know anything about that then—I don't remember anything from when Walter took me. Nothing at all."

And then, like a dam broke somewhere inside him, Peter just started telling me about his mother and about his childhood. For the years we'd been colleagues, lovers and friends I'd never known him to even mention his mother. Even when I'd asked outright on a couple of occasions, he'd brushed the questions aside with a glib or evasive comment.

Peter might complain about how little I shared, but the truth was he wasn't any more open about himself than I was. Not about his past—not about any of it, really. In reality, Peter was as hard to get to know as I was. It's just that he tends to disguise that fact by constant talking, which cultivates the illusion to others that they know him when nothing could be further from the truth.

After he'd talked himself out we laid there quietly for the better part of thirty minutes before he broke the silence by blurting out, "How could I not know Olivia?"

I didn't want to leave the shelter of his arms, but I needed to see his face, so I spun around to lay on my opposite side so we were face-to-face. I shook my head at him firmly, trying to stop him before he even headed down this path.

But he cut me off before I could say anything.

"I mean, really, it seems I don't _ever_ know. Maybe there's something wrong with me."

I almost laughed at the absurdity of it all, but his last words were so low he nearly whispered them and I knew he wasn't just talking about his mother anymore. I wormed an arm under his chest and slung the other over his bicep so I was holding him, albeit a little awkwardly and rested my forehead against his. "Peter, how _could_ you have known?"

"How could I have not? I'm supposed to _know_ you. At least I thought I did." He dropped his head against my shoulder, "Better than anyone. I wish you knew—," he trailed off.

"Peter, you feeling worse doesn't make me feel any better," I reminded him. I didn't want to lie and tell him it didn't matter—he knew better than that. Peter and I had never lied to each other—not on purpose anyway—and I didn't want to start now.

It _did_ matter—of course it did. But there was nothing to be done about it now and I'd long made my peace with it. It was time for Peter to do the same. It helped immeasurably that, given the development of our connection, the depth to which we now could feel one another, I was confident it would never happen again.

"Shh," I actually shushed him like a child because at that moment he felt like a child nuzzling in my arms, seeking reassurance. The role felt awkward; I was dizzy and off-balance, like I stepped into someone else's shoes and was wobbling through my first steps, but I didn't know what else to do.

I wish I could say that Peter not knowing I'd been replaced wasn't painful, but it still was. I'd have liked to believe that he'd always know me—that because of whatever there was between us, that he'd be able to just look and know, but hard experience has taught me that wasn't really how things happen.

It's memory that makes us who we are. Not the future, but the past. And that's exactly why Elizabeth, Peter's actual mother from the Other Side, could never be more than a cardboard cut-out pasted onto his emotions. He was a child and Walter stole his memories of her. It's detestable, but it doesn't change the fact that Peter belongs to the Elizabeth Bishop from this universe, the woman he always believed was his mother, the woman he spent his life with, and she belonged to him, probably more than she did her own dead son.

Fairy tales suggest that Peter _should_ have known somehow: instinctively, inexplicably. Should know and love the woman who gave birth to him, just as he should have known me well enough to know it wasn't me when the Other Olivia came over here and commandeered my life. But should doesn't count for much when it comes to human experience. Only memories, stacked tight as canned fish, carve time's direction in space. The conditional should just doesn't stand a chance.

It was the last actual conversation I remember us having until the night before Peter got into the machine.

There was nothing left to say.


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary**: Olivia comes back. Olivia and Peter save the world. Again.

**Pairings**: Peter/Olivia

**Rating**: M. You have been warned.

**Disclaimer**: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended

**Completed**: . . . almost there . . .

**Spoilers**: AU after early season 3 (more or less around _Do Shapeshifters Dream of Electric Sheep?). _Includes some elements of the early part of Season 3, but no spoilers beyond that.

**A/N**: Thank you to my beta, starg8fans. And a warm thank you to Coffinwood for the awesome Cover Art!

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><p><strong>Chapter 20<strong>

Olivia collapsed on top of me, her heart slamming inside her sternum against the spot where mine was doing the same.

The air in the office was thick and heavy with the smell of sex, heated skin, and the diminishing sounds of our combined gasping.

It was dinner time and Astrid had taken Walter with her to get some food before we resumed our work. Just enough time for Olivia to push me onto the office couch and climb on top of me and turn my brain to mush with accomplished hands and ready mouth.

A swath of Olivia's damp hair was stuck to my sweaty face and I tried to muster the energy to brush it aside, only to decide a moment later I didn't give a damn, since I was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to raise my arms from where they were heavily resting across her back and shoulders, still trying in vain to pull her closer.

You would think that the sharing of consciousnesses would be a beautiful, elegant thing. As if, because our minds were now linked all our problems would fall away and we'd be left with nothing but a heavenly simpatico which allowed us to solve all our inter-dimensional difficulties.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Instead, the ongoing experience of living in each other's heads was as ugly as it was brutal and ravaging. It felt unhealthy and wrong, as if we were violating the laws of nature: designing a methane-based life form or bringing the dead back to life.

I spent a lot of time wondering anew how in the hell Olivia had survived this long.

Long story, short: I threw up a lot. And Olivia set things ablaze so frequently that Astrid filed a standing, auto-renewable FBI purchase order for two dozen fire extinguishers.

In spite of the challenges, it _was_ getting easier, and we got a lot more proficient at finding each other and accessing each other's strengths. Every day Olivia's presence in my mind got stronger, and she said the same was true for me inside her. Truth be told, I think we fed off of each other. Olivia's strength strengthened my resolve and encouraged my confidence, and I strongly suspected that the control Walter claimed I gave her (not the abiding calm I did my best to convey to her) only increased her powers and her strength, which she fed back to me in the loop of our bizarre extra-sensory life-cycle.

But the process was so slow and so painful, that some days it felt like a medieval rack would be a faster, cleaner and less torturous means of self-destruction.

The fire was still a problem because Olivia's abilities seemed to be both internal and external, meaning that she could be as proficient (and potentially lethal) wandering around in my mind as she was at hurling things about the room and setting them on fire when she was feeling especially stimulated. Still, she seemed better able to control it when we were conscious these days, probably helped along by whatever it was that itched and buzzed between my shoulder blades when she was whipping herself up to ignite something. We knew in theory that I was supposed to be helping with Olivia's control, and maybe it even worked a little. But more often than not I still felt inadequate to Olivia's power when it built to that level and the little control I was capable of giving her seemed feeble against the fiery frenzy she generated when accessing her powers. As a result, during Walter-directed experiments in the lab, we inevitably regained consciousness to the dissonant tune of Astrid and Walter scrambling to smother a flame somewhere with the dozen or so strategically placed fire extinguishers.

Olivia responded to the frustration the way she usually does when things don't go her way, which is to say poorly and by growing more isolated and closed-off than usual. My temper, never good under the best of circumstances, didn't improve either. I was almost always either too exhausted or too overwhelmed myself to go running after her in real life and force her to communicate, which time had proven again and again was my role in our personal set of enabling behaviors. So Olivia and I did what we both do best: we ignored it and worked the job just like it was any other.

Olivia let out a long breath and relaxed into me. I tried not to wince when she moved her hands from where they were digging into the tops of my shoulders, shifting a little under her slight weight on my chest, detaching my sticky back from the fabric of the couch, testing the area where her fingers had been slicing into my flesh and bit back a hiss at the sting.

She probably drew blood. It wouldn't be the first time. The tops of my shoulders, which functioned as a handhold for Olivia's short, biting nails and narrow, penetrating fingers when she rode me with brutal resolve were definitely re-bruised, and I gave a momentary word of thanks that my dead mother had the foresight to shoot me in the bicep and not my shoulder. Given the extent to which our old injuries got aggravated from sometimes multi-daily bouts of ferocious sex, I wondered that we even managed to enjoy ourselves during these encounters.

Our lives may be unpredictable, but Olivia and I are not. Habit is a powerful thing, so in the grand tradition of our relationship, as the demands of work sapped all our energy, we responded to the stress, predictably, by drifting further and further apart. So, by the end of the day we were so sick of one another, of each other's minds, the very last thing we wanted to was encourage any kind of intimacy outside of work, emotional or otherwise.

Naturally, the worse things got between us, the better the sex was. Exponentially so. It never failed that when Olivia and I were furthest apart in every other capacity the sex was that much better. And so brain-meltingly intense that at times I worried about permanent bodily harm.

And frankly, with the sex this good, there wasn't much incentive to get along.

The development of my abilities and the snowball-effect on Olivia's own seemed to have unleashed something dark and savage between us, a primal hunger that showed no signs of abating. Olivia felt it too, I'd stake what was left of my life on it. I can't remember the last time we both slept entirely through the night without one of us reaching for the other sometime during its darkest hours, and afternoon quickies in whatever semi-private venue we could find had graduated from occasional to commonplace.

I wish I could say it was all stress, but only a little of it was. The truth was that no matter how much of Olivia I got I still felt empty. How that was even _possible_, since we'd pretty much taken up permanent residence inside each other's minds was as much a mystery to me as I suspected it was for Olivia. And I'd thought the gnawing hunger I'd felt for her in those months just after she was back from the Other Side was all-consuming. That felt like child's play compared to my compulsion for her now. Whatever she had to give me, it wasn't enough. I wanted to stretch her out on a rack so there would be more of her, I wanted to wrap her around me like a blanket so I could be completely surrounded with her, I wanted to peel her apart and crawl inside so I could merge with her completely.

It was as if the closer our minds got, the more blurred our identities, the more we craved the material experience of our bodies to counterbalance our increasingly intense, unnatural connection. It was impossible, of course. There was no mimicking what our minds were up to in any register, but impossibility had never stopped Olivia and me from trying before. So we left the veneer of normalcy we'd once cloaked ourselves in well behind us and clung to each other in grimy darkness and took from each other with a ferocity that I think terrified us both. If Olivia's wan and drawn face was any indication of what she saw reflected in mine, we were missing more sleep than was healthy for either of us, but I suspected we both needed the comfort, however fleeting, a good deal more than we needed the sleep.

Not that Olivia or I were ever any good at acknowledging our needs.

Olivia's heart slowed slightly, just barely out of time with the report of my own, and she turned her head to meet my mouth with a kiss that was more sharp, punishing teeth than anything else, before she tumbled off me and reached for her clothes.

I watched with a stab of disappointment as Olivia struggled back into her bra and shirt, covering all that mesmerizing skin of hers. I had to physically restrain myself from reaching out to touch the sueded skin of her belly and hip one last time, so instead, I lay there draped across the couch naked and sated, and watched Olivia dress.

It had been several weeks since I had fully come into my abilities and with the end of April, spring had popped in Boston that year with an almost audible noise. One day there was snow on the ground and the next it was above freezing, sun shining, winter coats packed away for another season, joggers in t-shirts and shorts, scantily-clad undergraduates prancing all over campus like a T&A parade just for me. Usually Boston has a few days in early May that promise spring before a final snowfall crushes everyone's sprits. Not this year. Spring sprung in an instant this year—and never snapped back to snowfall and freezing temperatures like the chronic cock-tease that she was—with a promise of better days and a renewed world that no one I knew believed in anymore.

Olivia, Walter, and I scarcely noticed.

Our time in the lab was becoming all-consuming, with Walter pushing us harder than I can ever remember being pushed, and, alarmingly, Olivia pushing back twice as hard. The horrifying feeling of losing my own will and being dragged along someone else's I experienced when Olivia and I went into each other's heads was beginning to creep into my living, waking life as well.

It didn't frighten me nearly as much as it should have, I thought lazily, watching appreciatively as Olivia bent to scoop up my clothes from where she'd flung them earlier, bring them over to the couch and drop them on my lap.

She started to move away from me with a snort of derision at my laziness, but I snapped my hand out to grab her wrist, giving her an enthusiastic tug so she lost her balance and tumbled on top of me.

She yelped a little, squirming in an effort to keep her mostly clean suit away from the stickier parts of my body.

The momentum of her upper body crashing into mine had tumbled her onto her shoulder on the couch with her hips across my lap. I pushed against her shoulder to press it down into the cushion so she was face-up and staring at me.

She had just dressed, but I was harassed by a need to feel her skin again, a possessive compulsion to swipe of my hand across her belly and ribs. Ignoring her surprised squawk, I flicked open the just-fastened buttons of her shirt and opened the flaps, spreading my hands across her stomach, burying my face in the smooth, slightly sweaty space between her breasts, right over the band of her bra.

Given how tense things had grown between us, I expected her to yell at me, certainly struggle to get free, possibly cuff me upside the head.

Then again, Olivia was very, very accomplished at surprising and baffling me.

Instead, she stilled; put a hand on the back of my head and another on my cheek in acknowledgement of my caress and then she squeezed me in what was perhaps the most awkward embrace I've ever received.

It was a hesitant, graceless, floundering stab at intimacy which, coming from Olivia, felt just right.

When I looked up from the smooth skin between her breasts to see her face, her eyes were thoughtful, a million miles away as she stroked the top of my head absently with her left hand.

And then the moment lurched away as wildly as it had come. Olivia's hands stilled in my hair and on my cheeks when she caught me looking at her, and she snatched her hands away as if she'd been burned, then shoved me off of her.

She clambered to her feet, buttoning her shirt exasperatedly and flew out the door without another word, leaving me to dress alone in silence.

I followed more slowly, dressing reluctantly, not at all anxious to head into the lab for another round of enforced mental rape. Then, with a resigned sigh, I headed out of the office and into the lab.

Later that night in the lab when Olivia was sleeping off one of Walter's more demanding exercises before we went home and I was trying to focus on the work and not pace like a caged animal from the ongoing strain, I felt a ripple in the air, the uncomfortable feeling of my muscle and sinew clamping to bone, and my body hair standing at attention on my skin. I flinched, trying to decide if I had actually heard something, or if my psyche had taken a final Double Gainer off the edge of Reason.

I looked up at Walter, who hadn't noticed anything and was completely absorbed in a set of calculations in front of him.

"Walter?" I asked, "Did you hear that?"

When Walter didn't reply, I began to call his name again, but I never got to the second attempt.

There was a loud noise that sounded a lot like tearing, that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once, followed by a bang as loud as a shotgun.

I felt rather than saw Olivia fly from the office in a dead run, her lips moving, forming words I couldn't hear over the roaring noise.

The air rippled again, and this time I saw and felt the shimmer in the atmosphere over by the far wall of the lab.

Olivia was still yelling into the din as she headed down into the lab past the equipment and tables and toward where the rippling blue light was blooming as if it were being birthed from thin air.

Walter and Astrid headed toward it too.

I, on the other hand, stood rooted to the spot. The atmosphere had only rippled like this once before that I could remember, and the non-stop looping memory of the depraved path of this pilgrimage made me feel like some unknown force was squeezing my insides. I barely had time to moan a curse before the very air itself in the corner of the lab whipped into a swirling cyclone that spewed something out that landed on the concrete floor with a wet, repellant plop.

It felt like time had suspended itself, just as it did in October, the last time this happened.

A heap of what looked like crumpled rags was slumped across the room from my position and even though I could see it with my own eyes, my mind was wholly unable to process the current input.

Olivia, Walter and Astrid now stood side-by-side looking at the figure slumped on the floor. My brain shut down and then whirred to reboot and, as if in a dream, I focused hard on my legs, forcing them to put one foot in front of the other to approach them.

I have no memory of making it over to where they were standing clustered around the pile, but somehow I managed it, and the next thing I knew I was there beside them peering down at the floor.

The pile of filthy rags stirred, whined, and then lifted what was most likely its head.

Even though I was used to time's trajectory being more or less flexible, it still felt odd to feel it drag past me in slow motion and leave me behind.

My mind finally unlocked itself and the first sensation I registered was the red mist of rage, the feeling of muscles tightening and throat closing.

The figure tipped a chin in Olivia's direction and quirked a sardonic lip in mine as I felt a strangled, very unmanly scream rise up through my chest and then freeze in my throat.

"I'm back," the figure rasped out between dry lips, "Did you miss me?"

And then The Faux leaned her bloody, bruised face to the lab floor and showered it with vomit.

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><p>Break. Break. Break.<p>

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><p>Break. Break. Break.<p>

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><p>I remember every detail about that afternoon when my Alternate showed up. I remember riding Peter into oblivion on the office couch during dinner-time. I remember his eyes, smoky–grey in the spring-storm light coming in from the windows, flush with desire. I remember the sensation of my nails biting into his skin and the bruising grip of his fingers against my hipbone and my neck as he used the leverage to hoist me up and then shoved me back down on his cock with unrestrained hunger, and I remember the awkward and terrifying embrace afterward when I'd been at the mercy of an uncontrollable desire for the closeness that had somehow gone missing between us.<p>

But most of all I remember the sickening recognition from Peter's mind the minute the racket and the rippling, tornado-shaped light brought me running from the office to the lab, the feeling of time resetting itself, and of Peter's mind spiking disbelief and anger.

I arrived at the source of the noise and skidded to a halt next to Astrid and Walter to stare at whatever new person/creature/thing the universe had just spit onto our lab floor.

I didn't even have time to register what had happened and lock eyes with my Alternative before Peter was beside me, his left hand sliding around to my right hip and extracting my weapon before he swiveled to point it at the other Olivia with such intent, focused casualness I was pissed I didn't think of it myself.

Even though I'd come to depend on Peter's uncommonly quick reflexes, the movement surprised me. The shock didn't mean I missed how the blank spaces in my mind where Peter always lived were hemorrhaging a fury so deadly it eclipsed everything with a controlled rage.

After she finished retching and riding out the dry heaves that I could see were mostly bile and blood, my Alternate let out a howl so feral and full of agony the back of my neck twitched uncomfortably at the sound.

Her shoulders shook and her arms cradled her ribs. She gasped and choked, and another howl concluded in a stream of barely-intelligible words torn out of her throat with, if possible, even more pain, "Aaaahhhh! This fucking sucks!" She lifted her chin to me and leaned ever so slightly in my direction. "You do this for sport?" she hollered at me, incredulous.

Peter took another step toward her by way of standing in front of me, dropping the pistol even further so it was unapologetically pointed at her head.

His forearm twitched.

It finally gave me a moment to focus on Peter, and I could actually feel his emotions change, feel the raw fury of contempt and revulsion harden into an icy, murderous rage that frightened me more than any of Peter's sparkling tempers ever could.

I took a step toward him and rested my hand on his forearm.

Only when I touched him did I sense a shift in the taut, blown-glass venom of his mind. He blinked and stared at my hand, following my line of vision when I tilted my chin towards the other Olivia crouched on the floor, still wailing and clutching at her body in agony.

She was filthy, I could see, even beneath the film of slop accumulated universe-hopping. Her face was purple, puffy with bruises, and one eye looked suspiciously swollen closed. Gone was the flowing mane of auburn hair and instead she sported short spikes that looked like it had been cut in a hurry with no regard for looks. Her hands where she clutched at her body were shaking and she looked thinner than I remember from the pictures I'd spent far too much of my time on the Other Side staring at, trying to figure out what it was about those smiling faces, including my own, that didn't feel right.

Astrid stepped forward calmly, her hand extended toward the soiled slump of woman, ragged clothes, and stomach contents tumbled out across the floor. She spoke soothingly, approaching closer with every word, until her hand hovered next to the other Olivia's shoulder. Astrid took a deep breath and then leaned closer still, murmuring quietly as she did so, working her hand slowly up and down my Alternate's arm.

The other Olivia's growling lowered to a dull moan as Astrid continued to soothe her while Peter, Walter, and I stood there staring at the spectacle in front of us, none of us willing or able to move.

I marveled that Astrid seemed more or less successful in calming the other Olivia, and soon the moaning almost ceased, reduced to huffed breaths under the influence of Astrid's tiny hands. I'd always known that Astrid's quiet competence and emotional finesse was the duct tape and bailing wire than held our dysfunctional shack of a family together. She'd offered proof enough of that when Peter was taken and I'd been damned near useless when it came time to formulate a viable plan to locate him.

Still, I had the opportunity to appreciate it anew as I watched her calm my Alternate down with what appeared to be some sort of unspoken insistence, another example of Astrid's skill and quiet command as she guided us through yet another shit-storm situation.

I myself had Peter to worry about. I was convinced that he'd just shoot my Alternate on principle and worry about asking questions later. He was tense and twitchy as hell, glaring at our newest intruder from the Other Side like he was reasoning that it would be worth it to shoot Astrid in order to get to the other Olivia.

The emotional over-flow from Peter's mind was making me feel like my skin was too tight.

I wasn't stupid enough to reach for the gun because I feared Peter might just shoot her as a reaction. I had no idea why she was here, but I figured she hadn't come on a social errand. Also, I had a sneaking suspicion that the battered condition of her body, which I could tell Peter hadn't yet registered, was the result of something more sinister than a lack of skill in crossing over. I had a sinking, gut-deep feeling that she was here either a) not of her own free will or b) because the shit really had hit the fan on the Other Side. Some instinct I didn't really want to examine at the moment made me believe she wasn't here to do us any harm, and that perhaps she might even be here to help.

To save time and argument, I stepped between her and the muzzle of the gun at the end of Peter's hand and wrapped both my hands around his taut wrist.

He stood there, still staring around me at the other Olivia like he was trying to decide if eight rounds would indeed be sufficient to turn her into the desired amount of gore. After a long moment, he finally relaxed his wrist under what I hoped were soothing fingers, and allowed me to lower the gun from where it was pointed at her.

"Olivia . . ." he muttered, and he looked genuinely confused at my actions, as if he couldn't quite figure out why I didn't agree that killing her wasn't the right course of action. I had a flash of feeling that he wasn't entirely sure where he was.

He dropped his arms and backed away from all of us, like he was trying to turn back time.

I slid the gun back into my holster and turned back to face the intruder just as my Alternate finally took a deep, shuddering breath and pushed Astrid's hand away from the smooth circles she was drawing on her back.

She lifted her head from the floor and peered at all of us, a hardened and ferocious light in her eyes.

She levered herself up, slowly and painfully, onto all fours and then sat there, swaying for a minute before she wiped her mouth with a shaking hand and then rocked back onto her haunches.

"What are you doing here?" Walter said, his voice sounding a good deal calmer than his face looked.

"Is that any way to treat an old friend," she asked glancing at Peter briefly before dropping her eyes. Still I couldn't believe the challenging defiance of her tone. Had I ever looked that confident in the face of complete defeat? I doubted it.

Peter took a threatening step closer, but I put a hand out, and sent a mental warning his way, as well, in a plea for us to listen.

Peter pushed against my arm for a minute, before he relaxed and nodded.

She watched our silent communication as the wry twist to her lips resolved itself into an arrogant smirk.

"Well, how about that," she taunted softly, her eyes alert. "Isn't it special—the lovers can communicate with their minds."

Peter just growled, and I turned what I hoped was a cool eye on my double.

"Why don't you tell us why you're here," I said. It was phrased as a question, but my tone made it a command. "How did you even cross over?"

"How else?" She wiped her nose and mouth inelegantly with the back of her sleeve and she made the gesture seem like a challenge. "Cortexiphan." She sniffed. "You left some behind when you were there."

"But how did you do that?" Walter interjected. I glanced at him, noticing he looked twice as angry as Peter, and almost as dangerous.

She shook her head like the matter couldn't be of any less importance. "Dunno," she claimed, "Lincoln's the scientist. He said if I got the injections and jumped into the Secretary's Sensory Deprivation Tank it might work."

"Also," she gave a bitter laugh, "we were highly motivated by being out of options."

"Why?" Peter said softly, and I wasn't sure what he wanted her to give reasons for, seeing as how there was such a variety of explanations Peter could be seeking. He moved to my side so our shoulders brushed, and I saw the other Olivia's eyes narrow when she observed the contact.

"My side," she said, "it's all gone to hell." She fixed her eyes on me. The Secretary is trying to keep the worst of it from the people, but it's not working." Her eyes were dull and flat as she went on. "Fringe Division disbanded by default. Charlie is dead. Lincoln is too by now, I guess. The last thing he did was shove me over here."

A violent cough interrupted her words and when it concluded she spat a wide circle of blood onto the floor and tipped her head wryly, though her eyes didn't leave mine. "Guess I'm headed out too. After I'm gone, there won't be anyone left to help fix anything." Her eyes bored into mine. "Lack of agents will do that to an organization."

She moaned again and clutched at her ribs, chest heaving as she fought for some semblance of control.

"Let me help you somewhere more comfortable." That was Astrid's voice, quite and low, and she called for Walter to help her move the battered woman.

Walter stared straight ahead for a few minutes before he finally blinked at Astrid and, observing the look on her face, he stepped forward to her. Together they helped the other Olivia up and they half-carried, half-dragged her over to one of Walter's gurneys.

I dug under a lab table to find something to drape over the table to soak up the blood and then scrambled to get it covered before they trio made it across the room.

I helped them heave my Alternate onto the gurney and she flopped from her side onto her back with a dangerously final whoosh of air.

Peter still hadn't moved from his spot on the opposite side of the room.

I started to head toward him and make sure he hadn't been turned to stone when the other Olivia's hand darted out to grip mine with a surprisingly strong grip. I yelped a little, given that I thought she was already unconscious, and the noise finally roused Peter from his mannequin impersonation.

He crossed the room in what looked like two strides, his eyes fixed on the spot where my Alternate's fingers were biting into my palm.

She yanked me down toward her and I had to ward Peter off with an extended hand. The waves of resentment rolling off of him were making it hard for me to focus. I could tell he was just the finest of fine hairs away from wrapping his hands around her neck and squeezing out what little life remained in her.

"You have to fix this," she grated and I could feel an unnatural heat radiating off her skin, "You _have_ to." The command, however, was somewhat undermined by more bloody coughing and I was close enough now to hear the fluids sloshing around in her lungs.

They don't call it a death rattle for nothing, and I'm very sorry to say that I know this from personal experience.

Under the edge of the gurney, I fished my free hand around until I found Peter's and then slid my fingers into his and held on for dear life, hoping to find some reassurance.

Astrid gasped softly and I heard her shuffle away for more supplies. I couldn't look though because I was too busy keeping Peter from killing her and trying to figure out what the fuck was going on.

"Olivia," Walter intoned. He used the voice that didn't brook any argument and I turned my head to look down my Alternate's thigh which I could now see sported a large wound leaking a lot of blood, visible since Walter had cut her pants away.

She half-sat up again and her hand shot out to grab my shirt. When she collapsed back onto her back she drug me with her so I was bent completely at the waist and hovering by her mouth which now had trickles of blood dripping out of it.

"He told me you could fix this," she said. "Colonel Broyles told Lincoln and me before he died that your side had a plan. Lincoln and I tried to talk to the Secretary, tried to get him to see reason, but ever since his wife disappeared he," her eyes dropped from mine for a minute, "he went a little crazy. Lincoln and I had been searching for her because we think she's behind the acceleration of the collapse of our world." Her eyes glanced wryly at her battered body.

"But Broyles said that you'd built the machine," she went on even more urgently, "and that Peter could run it and fix our world. You have to do this now."

I turned my head to glance at Peter whose jaw was so tight and set I feared it would shatter.

"You don't understand," she repeated. "You have to do it now. We've got days, not months! _Days_!"

Water leaked from the corner of her eyes. "Please," she pleaded, and I could tell that the begging pained her, possibly more than the slashes and blunt-force trauma she'd obviously endured. "Please. It's almost too late. Please."

Her grip on me loosened and her arm flopped down onto her chest.

Peter and I both looked at Walter.

He had finished cleaning some of her wounds, but when we looked at him he shook his head. "There's been internal damage, caused by the journey over. And that's not counting the injuries she sustained beforehand by," he glanced at her thigh, "what looks like a hunting knife."

Who or what the hell had beat her almost to death? I wondered what had happened on the Other Side to cause this.

I looked at Peter.

He nodded and reached for his phone.

Walter immediately started fluttering. "You can't do this now!" Peter and I gave him matching chiding looks. "Not _right_now," he insisted. "Olivia you've not recovered from this evening's experiment. And we have to get to New York."

Peter was already on the phone to Nina Sharp, talking in low, clipped tones, his shoulders stiff.

A few minutes later he was back, his face creased and grim. "Nina says the soonest they can get the machine re-assembled is tomorrow. It's in pieces right now, and one piece is undergoing a test."

When we looked back at my Alternate, she had passed out, probably before she heard the news. None of us said anything as we waited for the paramedics to show up. I was pretty sure I recognized one of them, which did little to improve the black cloud of my mood.

They loaded my Alternate into the ambulance, and somehow, I was the one who ended up riding along with her.

The other Olivia was unconscious, and the paramedics were working on her with single-minded focus. Listening to their clipped instructions to each other I gripped the edge of the backward-facing bench I was seated on as the lumbering squad took off, watching Peter, Walter and Astrid grow smaller and smaller on the wet pavement as the ambulance drove away.

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><p>Break. Break. Break.<p>

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><p>Break. Break. Break.<p>

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><p>After we dropped Astrid off at her apartment, Walter and I drove home to the nails-on-a-chalkboard caterwauling of Cat in the backseat. While she very much preferred being in the lab with us while we worked (and showed it when she was left at home in the very basic and animal-like way of pissing on my laundry), she most certainly did not like the journey to and from the Kresge Building.<p>

Walter and I were both so overwrought at the prospect of Olivia and me going ahead and working the machine the next day we barely even noticed the noise. When he caught me checking my phone for the four hundredth time, Walter hollered over the cat-racket, "It won't make her call you any faster, Peter."

"Yeah, but it makes me feel better," I snapped, double checking to make sure Olivia hadn't texted me and it went missing in my inbox.

Even when they were loading The Faux into the ambulance I still hadn't recovered from my rage enough to register that Olivia was accompanying her in the squad. I'd been wondering dazedly how that had all happened as I watched the silent, blinking lights of the ambulance coast down the access road and into the quad.

Now that I'd had a little time to gather myself, however, it occurred to me that sending Olivia with her Alternate to the hospital was, at best inconvenient and at worst downright dangerous. I focused hard on my driving, trying to locate Olivia and see if I could catch hold of her just a little to find out what she was feeling.

There wasn't a lot to find. A little distress, a miniscule spark of curiosity, but mostly just the weariness that was becoming Olivia's telepathic trademark. I did my very best to send calm her way, but, as usual, I had no way of knowing if I was successful.

When we got home, Walter shuffled off into the living room leaving me with animal care duties. I opened her crate Cat zipped out at lightning speed with a hiss and an affronted flick of her tail in my direction.

She hunted intently through the entryway, living room, and dining room, before turning to look at me, an accusing light in her gold eyes.

I headed into the kitchen, digging into the cupboard for a can of cat food, still trying to reach out to Olivia all while trying _not_ to focus on her too intently.

I say all this like I had even a small clue how our connection worked. It had been several weeks, and at times I still felt helpless as a newborn when it came to putting our connection to actual use when we weren't conducting an experiment in the lab. Don't ask me how this shit works, because I don't have a clue. For a whole lot of reasons, I'd gotten in the habit of just doing what Olivia told me to do, which usually ended up being the best course of action.

Cat returned to the kitchen, her fruitless search for her mistress completed. She settled daintily on her haunches across the room like she wanted to keep enough distance from me to avoid being contaminated and gave a discontented, throaty rumble, which I ignored while I rummaged around in Walter's new, alphabetized kitchen drawers for the can opener.

She hissed at me just on principle I suspect, then raised herself elegantly onto all fours, took two steps toward me like she was bestowing a great gift, and settled back on her haunches to glare up at me. She seemed to think about it for a minute and then deigned to issue one little, accusatory growl at me.

I stopped digging for the can opener to look at her.

"Yeah, I know, I miss her too," I told the animal, like she cared what I thought, even if she _could_ understand. "Get in line."

I found the opener, cranked the lid off the can, and glopped the toxic-looking sludge onto a plate.

I sat it on the floor and then went to move away, but unbelievably, the cat came over to me, rubbing against my knees where I was hunkered down on the floor and then dug the top of her head into my fingers.

No hissing. No spitting. Not even a growl. She gave a final noise somewhere between a purr and a rumble that sounded a lot like surrender, and then dipped her head to pick indifferently at her food.

Well, what do you know? Either she was desperate for attention or I was growing on her. I gave Cat a quick swipe from head to tail with my palm, surprised when she let me.

"See?" I told her. "If I had a little more time, I'd make you realize you can't live without me too."

I watched Cat eat with an odd, unspecified pleasure, and when she was finished, I turned out the lights, checked the doors and headed upstairs so I wouldn't disturb Walter in his customary spot, sprawled out on the couch, his _Dr. Who_ DVD's (a gift from Olivia for his birthday) scattered in a wide circle around the television.

Somehow, I still managed to be surprised when Cat followed me upstairs. She watched me with golden eyes as I took off my shirt and jeans. After I'd settled myself on the bed, she leaped up next to me and curled up, not on my side, but unbelievably on Olivia's, close enough to me I imagined she was trying to be a comfort.

I didn't risk petting her again. I knew all about the world's guarded, skittish, and hesitant creatures—about feeding them regularly, not pushing them, and quietly making myself essential.

About how, if you're really patient and a little lucky, eventually, they'll come to you.

Lights on, book tented on my chest, Cat and I fell asleep together waiting for our better-half to come home.


End file.
